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Bv HELEN B. MATHERS. 


17 TO ZJ VANDEW/TEf^ ST 

ev/Yo^K;- 



. . 






THE KING OF STORY PAPERS. 


THE 

NEW YORK FIRESIDE COMPANION. 

A PAPER FOR THE HOME CIRCLE. 

PURE, BRIGHT AND INTERESTING. 


THE FIRESIDE COMPANION numbers among its contributors the 
best of living fiction writers. Its Detective Stories are the most absorbing 
ever published, and its specialties are features peculiar to this journal. 

A Fresh Sermon by Rev. T. De Witt Talmage is 
Published in Every Number. 


THE FIRESIDE COMPANION is the most interesting weekly paper 
published in the United States, embracing in its contents the best Stories, 
the best Sketches, the best Humorous Matter, Random Talks, Fashion 
Articles, and Answers to Correspondents, etc. No expense is spared to 
get the best matter. 

Among the contributors to The Fireside Companion are Mary E. 
Bryan, Lucy Randall Comfort, Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller, Laura Jean 
Libbey, “ Old Sleuth,” Charlotte M. Braeme, author of ‘‘ Dora Thorne,” 
Mary C. Freston, Annabel Dwight, Clyde Raymond, Kate A. Jordan, 
Louise J. Brooks, Charlotte M. Stanley, etc. 


TERMS:— The New York Fireside Companion will be sent for one 
year, on receipt of $3: two copies for $5. Qetters-up of clubs can after- 
ward add single copies at $2.50 each. We will be responsible for remit- 
tances sent in Registered Letters or by Post-office Money Orders. Postage 
free. Specimen copies sent free. 

Address GEORGE MUNRO, 

' P. O. Box 3751. MUNRO’S PUBLISHING HOUSE, 

17 to 27 Vandewater St., and 45 to 53 Rose St., New York. 



LADIES! 


Jf you appreciate a Corset that will neither break down nor roll up in wear^ 

TRY BALL’S CORSETS. 

if you value health and comfort, 

WEAR BALL’S CORSETS;* ' 

If you desire a Corset that fits the first day you wear it, and needs no 
•breaking in,” 

BUY BALL’S CORSETS. 

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EXAMINE BALL’S CORSETS. 

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USE BALL’S CORSETS. 

Owing to their peculiar construction it is impossible to break steels in 
Ball’s Corsets. 

The Elastic Sections in Ball’s Corsets contain no rubber, and are warranted 
to out-wear the Corset. 

Every pair sold with the following guarantee : 

“If not perfectly satisfactory in every respect after three weeks’ 
trial, the money paid for them will be refunded (by the dealer). 
Soiled or Unsoiled.” 


The wonderful popularity of Ball’s Corsets has induced rival manu- 
‘facturers to imitate them. If you want a Corset that will give perfect satis- 
faction, insist on purchasing one marked. 

Patented Feb. 22 , 1881 . 

And see that the name BALL is on the box; also Guarantee of the 

Chicago Corset Co. 

AWARDED HIGHEST PRIZES WHEREVER EXHIBITED. 

For Sale l>y all I.ieadinjg’ ■>!•>' Ooods Dealers in tlio 
United States, Canada and Ung^land. 


MUNRO^S PUBLICATIONS. 


The Heiress of Hilldrop; 

OR, 

THE ROMANCE OF A YOUNG GIRL. 

By GEABLOTTE M. BRAEMB, 

Author of “ Dora Thorne^ 

Complete in Seaside Library (Pocket Edition), No. 741. 
PRINTED IN LARGE, BOLD, HANDSOME TYPE. 

prick: 20 cErvTs. 

For sale by all newsdealers, o-r sent to any address, postage pre- 
paid, on receipt of the price, 20 ceats. Address 

GEORGE MUNRO, Munro’s Publishing House, 

P. O. Box 3761. 17 to 37 Vandewater Street, New York. 


SKIM UBMn (POCKET EDITION). NO. ?ll. 

A CARDINAL SIN. 

A NOVEL. 

BY HUGH CONWAY, 

Author of “ Called Back.” 

PRINTED IN LARGE, BOLD, HANDSOME TYPE. 


PRICE 20 CEI^TS, 


For sale by all newsdealers, or sent to any address, postage 
prepaid, on receipt of the price, 20 cents. Address 

GEORGE MUNRO, Munro’s Publishing House, 

P. O. Box 8751. 17 to 27 Vandewater Street, New York,' 


THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 


/ 


BY 


HELEN B. MATHERS. 




NEW YORK: 

GEORGE MUNRO, PUBLISHER, 
17 TO 27 Vandewater Street. 




HELEN B. MATHERS’S WORKS 

CONTAINED IN THE SEASIDE LIBRARY (ROCKET EDITION): 


NO. PRICK,, 

13 Eyre’s Acquittal ■" 10 

221 Cornin’ Thro’ the Rye 20 

438 Found Out 10 

635 Murder or Manslaughter? 10 

713 “Cherry Ripe!” . . 20 

795 Sam’s Sweetheart .20 

798 The Fashion of this World 10 


THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 


CHAPTER 1. 

“ Life is real, life is earnest, 

And the grave is not its goal: 

Dust thou art, to dust returnest, 

Was not spoken of the soul.” 

A CHILD was sitting in a wash-house on a bucket turned 
upside-down; she held a half-eaten unripe apple in one 
hand, and in the other a small brown biography that she 
had opened at a certain page, and was attentively scan- 
ning. 

‘‘ There ^s no Bonnor there, she said aloud, and put the 
apple in her lap, then fished in her pocket for a pencil, 
with which she made two broad lines, one up and one down, 
between the names of two celebrated persons, and exactly in 
the center of these two names she wrote her own — Audrey 
Bonnor — and she added a single word. She looked at the 
round childish characters with satisfaction before she closed 
the book, then she eat steadily through her sour apple, 
pulled her stockings up, and made for the door. Appar- 
ently her head, popped gingerly out, made a spot of color 
that attracted immediate attention, for there was a shout 
of “ Audrey! come here^^ and a tall boy with a fishing-rod 
in his hand, and a basket on his back, beckoned her to join 
him. 

‘‘ 1 said Audrey, in a carefully suppressed voice. 


6 


THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 


mother will be coming this way in a minute, and IVe lost 
my garter again. 

Oh, get some string. Just look at these fish. ArenH 
they beauties?^ ^ 

“ Yes. CouldnH you take me with you some day, 
Ken?^^ 

Oh, no! Seth always comes with me, you know. I 
think that^s the missuses voice; you’d better bolt.” 

The door in the ivy-covered wall swung to behind him; a 
minute later she heard his voice joining others on the lawn, 
and she sighed, and wondered why Providence blew so 
hard upon her hooks and eyes, and made her frocks tear so 
much quicker than other people’s, as if it had not been 
cruel enough already in making her red-headed, and a 
standing disgrace to the looks of the family. 

She knew exactly what was passing on the other side of 
the wall, but, all the same, she climbed to the upper win- 
dow of the wash-house, and, leaning her elbows on the sill, 
looked out. 

Tom Bonnor was going for a ride, and all his family had 
assembled, more or less publicly, to witness his departure. 

A. brace of daughters had handed him his hat and gloves 
in the hall, a couple more were about to escort him to the 
stable court-yard, and Mrs. Bonnor herself, with half a 
dozen or so of the fry, was awaiting him there, with an 
extra shade of amiability in her face to atone for the medi- 
tated duplicity to her lord which just then burned beneath 
her stays. 

What an exquisite air!” she remarked, as Tom swung 
himself into the saddle, and Bobbie trotted his . pony up 
alongside him. 

“ Confound the air!” said Tom, and Mrs. Bonnor looked 
herself confounded as he rode away, \^ith Bobbie following 
at his tail, through the barken gates, and so out of sight. 

Other eyes watched him along the narrow bit of street, 
and round the corner, and then the facade of the house be- 


THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 


7 


came suddenly bare of peepers, and such a scurrying and 
scrambling of feet was heard as might have suggested an 
army of rats all setting in the direction of the garden. 

And it was a garden to startle visitors who had only seen 
the narrow-eyed, monastic side of the house that turned its 
back on the principal street of Cricklehorn; and strangers 
were astonished when they saw straight through to endless 
vistas of emerald green, with a flood of light on its borders, 
varying in their blossoms with the seasons, so that in 
spring there would be a fringe of scarlet may and the 
down- dropping gold of the laburnum, or in the full sum- 
mer a blaze of geraniums, and in autumn a broad ribbon 
of the dahlia, that flower which seeks to mock the rose in 
its variety of color, but is a] ways hard and cold, and coveted 
and worn by none. 

Spiteful people said that the house was a fraud upon its 
neighbors, leaving them all bare of garden, for it was as if 
you had scooped a hollow in the town for Tom Bonnor^s 
lawn, his grape-houses, and pyramid orchard, his kitchen- 
garden, big and prolific enough to supply a regiment; his ^ 
large apple-orchard, and the great field beyond, not to men- 
tion that large outlying tract known as the laundry, the 
stables, the coachman^s house, the poultry-yard, and the 
tallet, each and all well known as hiding-places to the 
lovers who infested the place like locusts the moment that 
Tom Bonnor had vanished. 

Mrs. Bonnor was not unaware of the sort of alien seed 
sprouting in her garden as she came through the court- 
yard supporting the steps of a toddling child, while one in a 
nurse^s arms hard by scolded at her for not noticing him. 

Somehow one never thought of Mrs. Bonnor without a 
baby, perhaps with its head over her shoulder, and her gen- 
tle hand patting its back, or, with its cheek laid close to 
hers, looking out from that coign of vantage without fear 
at all the world. And if by slow degrees she slipped him 
to the ground, be sure that he drew a fiber of her heart 


8 


THE FASHIOH OF THIS WORLD. 


with him, nor released it till another child came to fill the 
hardly emptied arms. 

But that gentle hand could deal terrible raps with its 
knuckles on doors and windows behind which unlawful 
beaus were suspected to hide; it could also administer a 
sound box on the ear to a nearly grown-up son or daughter, 
if, ill the eternal war that raged between the elders and the 
youngers of the family, the latter received from the former 
the castigation they more or less richly deserved. 

He is going, said Bet, as the door in the ivy-covered 
wall swung to behind them, and it will be quite safe to 
send the invitations off to-night. 

No,^^ said Mrs. Bonnor, turning round unexpectedly, 
they shall not go till we have seen your father actually off 
in the train to-morrow. 

“ Leaving the neighborhood less than one clear day to 
starch itself up for the occasion,^' said Cecily dryly, as she 
followed her sister round the rhododendron bed and so to 
the garden. But who is this Mr. Newdegate? He must 
be very old since he is a friend of father’s. And of course 
he will turn up to-morrow, and spoil our party.” 

“ I don’t mind if he does,” said Bet stopping short. 
‘‘ To tell the truth. I’m sick of these parties — and — and 
hoysr 

Hammett’s not a boy,” thought Audrey indignantly. 

‘‘ I’m not sure that I shouldn’t like to see a man,” went 
on Bet; “ somebody who thinks of something else than get- 
ting his arm round your waist, and taking a flying shot at 
your face, and it is so disagreeable to be kissed on your 
nose, and I call it an idiotic idea altogether. ” 

“ Perhaps Mr. Newdegate will have a better idea of the 
art,” said Cecily, dryly, and Audrey overhead nodded vio- 
lently in sarcastic agreement. 

“ What is the good of it all?” continued Bet; “ they are 
all boys, while we are women. By the time Hugh has got 
his commission, or Hammett has succeeded his father 


THE FASHIOK OF THIS WOULD. 9 

(though of course he is out of the question), I shall be an 
bid woman. 

Audrey, looking down on blooming Bet, did think she 
would be remarkably old, but who would not wait a year, 
or ten, or twenty, for true love at last? 

“ What does it matter ?^^ said Cecily in her slow, soft 
voice. “ We are very well as we are. We are happy; the 
place is lovely. We need never go outside the street door 
except on Sundays, when it is quite an amusement to see 
new beaus swarniing round our pew.^’’ 

‘‘ And the pew-opener will retire on an annuity while we 
starve,^’’ said Bet impatiently. Can^’t you see that father 
is worried, that his going to town means some bother about 
money, and that he is trying to hide it from mother, whose 
thoughts are chiefly taken up with the babies?’^ 

They canT take care of themselves, said Cecily, 

and we can. 

‘‘ But there are too many of them and us,^^ said Bet im- 
patiently. ‘‘ How is father going to provide for thirteen 
children 

‘‘ Of course we girls will marry,^^ said Cecily, ‘‘ and the 
boys — 

‘‘Will have to emigrate or starve, said Bet; “ and as 
to our marriages, I think the outlook very uncertain. And 
in any case we shall have to wait for the men, instead of 
their waiting for us. Disgusting!’^ 

“ You might do worse than wait for such a hian as Ham- 
mett, miss,” thought Audrey indignantly, as her sisters, 
still talking, passed away out of ear-shot, and she followed 
them with her eyes until at the lower end of the lawn four 
tall male figures joined them, and gradually all the six 
dwindled out of sight, in the direction of the orchard. 

From the stables and their adjacent hiding-places came 
shouts of laughter, and a confused Babel of voices, all 
young and clear and delighting in their own sound, but 
with so little mischief in it that, unconsciously, Audrey 


10 


THE FASHION" OF THIS WORLD. 


turned her head round to listen^ much in the attitude of a 
cat who is gently tickled under the ear, and too pleased 
with the sensation to wish it to cease. 

In the air generally was a noise and mirth that did not 
consort with the idea of serious love-making or serious 
hearts. Robust laughter, hearty repartee, echoed on every 
side^ and a listener might have doubted if a single hour had 
ever been wasted in love-sighs by any one of the young per- 
sons present. Country courting is for the most j)art ful- 
filled in as leisurely a way as the progress of the seasons, 
and nothing but the sight of a rival in the field, or some 
obstacle thrown between him and his flame, will pique the 
modern Lubin into the ecstasies and discomforts of a grand 
passion. 

But even as the chief attraction of a married woman is 
said to be her husband, so the pickly cegis extended by the 
belligerent Tom Bonnor over his daughters seemed to at- 
tract the more violently that noble army of lovers by which 
the girls had been attacked ever since they were old enough 
to send a valentine and receive one. 

Two of the flock had already departed the family life, 
but only to enter a more honorable estate if their father 
could only have believed it. As it was, he had all the 
blinds of the house pulled down on each occasion, and for- 
bade those within his gates to attend church on the Sun- 
days following their departure. To be sure, those depart- 
ures were notT)rthodox ones, but the arms that received the 
fair runaways were perhaps as stout and strong as if the 
parental blessing had authorized them to thus encumber 
themselves, and the left-behind sisters only required equal 
inducements to run equal risks in pursuit of happiness. 
But Tom Bonnor had taken good care, as he thought, to 
frustrate any further matrimonial plans formed by the 
young females of his family, and looked forward cheerfully 
to a fine, healthy assortment of old maids to soothe his de- 
clining years. If a young man honorably addressed him 


THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 11 

with a proposal for a daughter, it was Tom^s wont to 
reply that he imagined the offer was intended for one of his 
house-maids, or he would write to say he begged to decline 
taking any notice of the man^s communication, or politely 
invite him to call at the back door, where he should receive 
a particularly warm reception. As to the society of the 
neighborhood, he never permitted his daughters to join in 
it, and in church he would fiercely watch the adjacent 
squires and youths, and whenever he discovered a predilec- 
tion in any young man ^s eye, he would alter the position of 
the object of it, and every Sunday a game at general post 
w^ould be played in the big, square, many-cornered pew. 

But ‘‘ Ohassez la Nature, et elle revient en galop and 
privately the girls made rich amends for their nun-like 
freedom from beaus in public. No sooner was Tom^s back 
turned in one of those visits to town that he pretty fre- 
quently undertook, than a full tide of life, and principally 
masculine life, flowed through the house and garden. 
Young men rang boldly at the front-door bell or swaggered 
in through the garden gates, or by way of the orchard and 
meadow, and cheerful joys were the order of the day, and a 
little supper and a dance the order of the night. 

And no outsider blamed Mrs. Bonnor, though she, poor 
soul, often blamed herself. 


CHAPTER IL 

“ She’s gpne to her father’s coffers, 

Where all his money lay; 

And she’s ta’en the red and left the white. 

And lightly she’s tripped away.” 

Younger eyes nearer home looked on, and perhaps 
blamed the mother too. Audrey, the stray red-headed link 
between two sets of brothers and sisters who were either too 
young or too old to understand her, slipped presently from 


12 


THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 


her post of obseryation, meaning to regain the school-room, 
and continue the work that was to float the whole family in 
a sea of prosperity. For she still clasped the biography, 
and her little black thumb had made an indentation be- 
tween the brackets that her hand had placed. But when 
she got there she found Stephen sitting by the window, who 
had a dissatisfied air as he looked out of the window at the 
dawdling backs of one or two of the pairs before mentioned. 
HisFrow smoothed as he saw his young sister, then asked 
what scrapes she had got into that day. 

I-ve dropped the baby, torn my frock, broken a basin, 
and told a story, said Audrey, in a dismal voice that yet 
suggested hope in the background. 

“ What did you tell a story about said Stephen frown- 
ing. 

“I said I^d taken father ^s rifle out of the library, when 
Kenneth had done it. ” 

‘‘ And what punishment did you get?^^ 

“ Six Psalms. I can learn those in half an hour; but 
they hinder me with my book. ” 

“ WhatbookP^ 

‘‘ The one I began last year.’^ 

A smile crossed Stephen's ruffled bi*ow. 

What is it about?’' 

Oh, it is a novel, you know.” 

“ And when you have finished it, what will you do with 
it?” 

“ I shall have it printed and bound — like this. ” 

Stephen took the biography out of her hand. It opened 
naturally at a page where a childish hand had made a 
bracket, and written in, ‘‘Audrey Bonnor, Novelist,” be- 
tween two names celebrated in the eyes of the world. 

“ Poor Carrots!” said Stephen gently; “ but it’s just as 
well you should have an occupation, though if you took 
up one that would pay, it might be better. It seems to me 
we shall all have to earn our bread some day. ” 


THE PASHIOH OF THIS WORLD. 13 

Yes/^ said Audrey, “ that is why I began to write— to 
make money and help father. What are you going to be, 
Stephen 

The tall lad, he was scarcely more, turned quickly to look 
at the little bright, iigly^ freckled face so near his own, and 
exclaimed, Why aren't you older. Carrots? I could talk 
to you — those girls are no good. They think of nothing 
but dress and flirting, and even Meg, hardly out of short 
frocks, has taken to their ways. " 

They are going to have a party to-morrow," said 
Audrey. 

‘‘ And I am sick of these parties," said Stephen, as he 
got up and began to march about the room. “ What is 
the good of them? what do they lead to? Here is a pack of 
young fellows fooling round after the girls, not one of them 
in a position to marry, or at least those who might be able 
to marry some day, father would never hear of, and the 
eldest of the lot isn't twenty!" 

But that's a great age," said Audrey; ‘‘ and they’ll 
grow. " 

“ I tell you. Carrots," said Stephen, stopping short and 
looking at her as if she were a grown person, we are all 
leading the lives of a lot of young animals — we think of 
nothing but eating, drinking, and making merry, and for 
my part I've had my fill of it all, and I want to do some- 
thing. I've no mind to slip into the purposeless, dawdling, 
gentlemanly state of vagabondage lived by the Garvocks, 
and upon my soul I'm more than half inclined to envy 
Hammett Yorke." 

Audrey nodded. 

He works," she said. ‘‘ I like iieople who work. " 

‘‘ I said to father just now,’' went on Stephen, as one 
who must talk his heart out, even to a child, “ ‘ Father, let 
me learn a 1 rade, or let me be prepared for a profession, 
only give me a few years' good education, then leave me to 
shift for myself, but don't keep me here at a wretched 


14 


THE FASHION OF THIS WORLH. 


grammar-school learning nothing that will be of service to 
me, and falling gradually into wild, idle, useless ways/ 

And what did father say?^'’ said Audrey. 

That as long as I had a horse to ride, a gun to handle, 
and my studies to pursue, he considered I had quite enough 
to occupy my mind; that there was plenty of time yet for 
me to choose my profession, though for his part he didi/t 
see the need of one, while as to trade, it was out of the 
question, and so the matter ended there, as it always does. 

The question was a little beyond Audrey’s grasp. She 
looked through the open window and thought. 

“ If I were married and had a family,’^ said the fifteen- 
year-old boy, striding about, “ I would live as closely as 
possible. I would give them bread and cheese for dinner 
three times a week, but I would educate my sons well. 
They should have a fair start given them in life, then if 
they failed it would be their fault, not mine. 

And of course the girls would marry, said Audrey. 

“ I mean — if there was not one like me. 

‘‘As it is,” continued Stephen, “father has thirteen 
children, and has been living up to every penny of his in- 
come, and over, for a good many years. And father is 
worried; whenever he is crosser than usual, it generally 
means worry. ” 

“ All the Toms of our family run through everything,” 
said Audrey, shaking her head gravely, “ and you see fa- 
ther is a Tom. •’ ^ % 

More’s the pity for us,” said Stephen; “ far better to 
have fewer horses in the stable, and keep a plainer table, 
than to be always indulging our bodies at the expense of 
our wits. ” 

“ What’s that?” said Kenneth, who had entered the 
room in time to hear the last speech. “ I don’t agree with 
you at all, old boy. Our wits are sharp enough, and it’s 
very comforting to have your body and your tastes as well 


THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 15 

cared for as they are here. It"s a jolly existence, and I 
donH want a better. 

‘‘ And some day/" said Stephen, wheeling round, you 
will stand on this very spot, and use the same words that I 
am using to-day, unless you have sunk to the level of the 
Garvocks, and are content to be without aim and object in 
life."" 

“ Lots of time!"" said Kenneth, who was putting away 
his fishing-tackle, ‘‘ and there will be fine fun to-morrow. 
I suppose you will get the wine out?"" 

‘‘ No,"" said Stephen shortly. 

Then I can,"" said Kenneth cheerfully. I dare say 
you "re getting rather big to crawl through that hole in the 
Wall now."" 

‘‘ Not too big, but ashamed,"" said Stephen, as he crossed 
the school-room and went out. 

‘‘Whew!"" whistled Kenneth. “I say, Audrey, 
what"s — ?"" 

But Audrey had vanished in the wake of Stephen, and 
being shaken off by him, stood on one leg, meditating as 
to the course her steps should take. Finally, she ascended 
to the nursery, and sat down to hide her wrinkled stock- 
ings, when she found that Mrs. Bonnor was there, hearing 
her youngest children say their prayers. 

It was Davy, aged five, who with tightly buttoned-up 
eyes was essaying for the second time something new that 
his mother had taught him the night before, and which he 
now rendered thus: The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
the love of God, and the fellow shook the Holy Ghost, be 
with us all now and nevermore. Amen. "" 

Audrey stole out again, smothering an explosion, and 
finding the Psalm-book out of which she had been set a 
punishment,"" looked about for a quiet place in which to 
learn her lesson. She hated to stay in-doors this glorious 
summer" s evening, but she feared to go abroad with so 
many lovers about, for if an interview could be spoiled, 


16 


THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 


Audrey was sure to spoil it; if either of Bet’s two loverjj 
happened to be making any specially urgent plea, Audrey’s 
freckled face, inside a white sun-bonnet, was certain to ap- 
pear upon the scene. There was not a spot in the place 
that was safe from her if her absence were anxiously de- 
sired, though none grieved more sincerely over her mala- 
pr02:)0S appearances than herself. 

‘‘ The tank would be safe,” she said aloud, “ for I saw 
them all go down to the orchard,” and to the tank accord- 
ingly, which was situated in the middle house of the 
graperies, she betook herself. Going through the tool- 
house and opening the door abruptly, she so startled two 
young people who were sitting by the edge of the water, 
that one of them nearly fell in backward, then recovered 
herself, and lost her temper the same moment. 

“ That wretched Carrots!” she exclaimed indignantly^ 
but as Audrey vanished and shut the door^ the child did 
not feel as wretched as usual. 

It was Hammett who sat by Bet’s side, not Hugh, and 
surely she was listening to the young man willingly, and 
was there not a blush of something other than wrath upon 
her cheek? 

Crossing the kitchen-garden to gain the hay-rick, Audrey 
fell in with Cecily, tripping between two lovers, and with 
an air of being equally happy with either; while in the dis- 
tance, Hugh Garvock lazily swaggered, having already, by 
dint of much practice, acquired something of the carriage 
necessary for the cavalry regiment to which he awaited his 
appointment. 

If he were sulky, he seemed to show it. A Uase air had 
already spread itself in anticipation over his handsome but 
vapid features, and probably nothing but the appearance of 
a determined and despised rival would have kept Bet’s 
charms at all fresh in his sight. Audrey hated him, but he 
languidly returned the compliment, so, when he saw her 
dodging behind the gooseberry bushes till they should have 


THE FASHIOIs'’ OF THIS WORLD. 17 

passed, lie stopped short, and made her a profound saluta- 
tion. 

“ Good-evening, Miss Bonnor,^^ he said. ‘‘ But are you 
not afraid to come out without a hat? There are birds 
abroad who might peck at your head. " 

“ Not while your mustache is near,^^ said the child, look- 
ing with withering contempt at the young man^s upper lip; 

and it^s. only donkeys who canT keep their eyes off car- 
rots. What is the matter with your legs? They are as 
bandy as Davy’s. 

“ Where’s Bet?” said Hugh, continuing his walk, with a 
perceptible increase of color in his face. 

‘‘ Quite happy with Hammett,” said Audrey, as she too 
proceeded on her way, and, going through the little door 
in the wall, found herself in the orchard, and in sight of 
her two other sisters, each walking at some distance apart, 
and each with a youth upon either hand, quarreling over 
her glances, snatching from one another her every word, 
exchanging scowls behind her back, and racking their 
brains to invent some pretext for getting a Ute-a-Ute with 
her. 

These four young men thought the taste of their elders 
very bad, and Bet and Cecily decidedly overripe. They 
preferred the slim girl shapes, the plaited tails of hair, the 
scarcely hidden ankles of these young maids in their first 
bloom, maids who could jump a five-barred gate, ride bare- 
backed, and play cricket as well as themselves. 

Between these two sets of young men waged a bitter and 
never-ceasing hostility, and base were the tricks they played 
upon each other to secure their own favor in the eyes of the 
Bonnor girls, and tortuous the maneuvers they executed 
to steal a march upon one another. More than once a 
Yorke had locked a Garvock up in the tallet and kept him 
there a whole night, while, in return, a Yorke had been 
shut into the fowl-house, and left with his thoughts and 
feathered company till morning; but the Garvocks had this 


18 


THE FASHION OF THIS WOKLD. 


immeasurable advantage over their rivals, that they were 
openly admitted as visitors to the house, while the Yorkes 
had to come in by stealth at the back door. 

It was an exquisite satisfaction to a Garvock to dress 
himself correctly, and ring the hall door-bell when he knew 
Tom Bonnor was to be found at home, to be ushered in to 
pay a visit of ceremony, and subsequently stroll perhaps 
with Tom round the grounds, doing his best to guide his 
host into every dangerous corner where a Yorke was likely 
to be hidden. Baseness could go no further than when on 
one occasion Hugh, seeing the point of Hammett ^s foot 
sticking out from beneath the straw with which Bet had 
hastily covered him, prodded it violently with his walking- 
stick, and even administered one or two surreptitious kicks 
behind Tom^s back to his prostrate enemy. 

Perhaps the jealousy existing between all these young 
male lovers furnished the spice in what would otherwise 
have been an insipid cup, and Bet would look from one to 
the other of her stalwart boys in something the way that 
the lioness does when the fight for her favor is going for- 
ward, and she knows that she will fall to the lot of the 
stronger; but now and then serious quarrels would result, 
and all the beaus would disappear for a spell, and the girls 
be left to their own de.vices. 

Tom Bonnor knew that the Garvocks were more or less 
about the place, but he thought, and wisely, perhaps, that 
there was not much to fear from them, they having grown 
up with his own children, and being all more or less near 
of an age. 

The Yorkes were quite another matter. He did not like 
their father — a rich manufacturer of hair-seating and sail 
cloth who had settled in the town, and who could afford to 
educate his sons better, and place them better in the world 
than any neighbor of his was likely to do. Tom Bonnor 
could not have given a reason for this dislike, but it was 
there, and the other knew it, and perhaps laughed in his 


THE FASHIOIn^ OF THIS WORLD. 


19 


sleeve at it, the more especially that he wiiiked at the fact 
of his motherless sons spending half their time in dancing 
attendance upon the Bonnor girls. Tom had not forbidden 
the Yorkes the place, because he never suspected them of 
coming there. He had an Englishman's characteristic and 
wrong-headed pride in his daughters — they were his own, 
and he hated the idea of any man touching his property, 
and if he could provide for them, why say “ Thank you 
to another man for doing it? 

His mind did not glance to them in the future as old 
maids, and it did not seem to occur to him that by keeping 
them entirely out of society they must inevitably gravitate 
toward that state. He turned his back on the county, and 
the county turned its back on him. He found far better 
company at home than he was ever likely to get abroad, 
and given his hunting (which was excellent, as there were 
three packs in the neighborhood); his shooting, and his 
fishing, keep every sign of a beau out of his sight, and he 
was happy. He would talk to his neighbor riding to cover, 
a man was welcome to a slice of mutton at his table, but he 
never either paid or returned a formal visit. 

“ Is there any news.^"*^ said Bet, as with Hugh Garvock 
on one side and Hammett Yorke on the other, she strolled 
beneath the apple-trees in the orchard. 

“ I believe there^s a rise in chair bottoms,^ ^ replied Hugh 
Garvock in languid tones. ‘‘ Good for you, Yorke, and 
that reminds me my horse ^s girths are wearing out — will 
you send a dozen yards round to-morrow morning? And 
really, I think some of that stuff you make might do for 
braces. 

‘‘ How dare you talk before me of braces, sir?^" flashed 
out Bet, and Audrey stole her sun-bonnet round the corner 
to see the flashing eyes of her eldest sister as she looked at 
the young man. ‘‘ I wish you only knew how to make any- 
thing half as useful as the articles you were just mention- 
ing.” 


20 THE lASHION^ OF THIS WORLD. 

I suppose one could learn/ ^ said Hugh equably. Even 
trades-people have been known to learn manners in th6 
course of two or three generations.^^ 

Hammett Yorke laughed. 

What are you laughing at?^^ cried Cecily gayly, as she 
approached with her swains. 

Hugh is trying to be witty/ ^ said Bet serenely. 

‘‘ Here^’s the missus cried a voice, and m a second the 
girls and their swams had made a bee-line to the orchard, 
but not before Mrs. Bonnor had discovered them and pre- 
pared to follow. With her terrible knuckles she had pre- 
viously routed Bet and Hammett out of the hot-houses; in 
vain they had laid low and pretended not to see or hear 
her through the glass, and as the entrances through the tool- 
house were secured, she had preferred to stand rapping at 
the pane until the pair of culprits walked out, sulkily 
enough, but handsome even in their sulks. 

With Cecily Mrs. Bonnor did not attempt to meddle — 
there was safety in numbers — but she stepped out with a 
will to overtake the chits who ought to be in the school- 
room at their lessons instead of dancing about with a pack 
of boys. 

But when she reached a barn or sort of lean-to fixed 
against the orchard wall, she found Hazel and Meg alone, 
with innocence painted on their blooming faces and some 
tatting held in their idle hands. 

‘‘Where are those boys?’’ said Mrs. Bonnor, looking 
round suspiciously. 

“ Boys?” said Meg, and “ Boys?” said Hazel, looking 
astonished. 

“ Yes, boys, miss,” said Mrs. Bonnor. “ How I know 
you’ve got them hidden here somewhere,” and she walked 
to the piles of straw and hay littered about, and began to 
poke among them with her parasol, with the result that 
very soon four stalwart young men were discovered, not in 
the least abashed, being in fact accustomed to hiding in 


THE FASHION- OF THIS WORLD. 


21 


fowl' houses, tallets, and even the pig-sty upon some mem- 
orable occasions. 

“ Arty,^^ said Mrs. Bonnor, addressing the smartest of 
the culprits as he got up and shook the hay out of his hair 
and eyes, “ if I catch you here again 1^11 tell Mr. Bonnor, 
and — 

A shrill whistle in the distance cut short Mrs. Bonnor ^s 
threats ; her majesty vanished, for she knew that a greater 
than she was at hand, and in the twinkling of an eye all 
the young men had faded, dwindled, and vanished out of 
sight, and in their stead appeared only four white-robed, 
demure damsels who hastened to approach and kiss their 
father. 


CHAPTER III. 

“ This country life, 

Where wounds are never found, 

Save what the plowshare gives the ground, 

. . . . Nor envy less among 

The birds for price of one sweet song.” 

Mrs. Bonnor was making a junket, and all the younger 
cliildren who were not at school and who were old enough 
to stand upright were helping her. 

Many a young mouth watered as the delectable mass 
neared completion, and many a longing eye followed the 
great china bowl when it was borne away to a cool retreat 
in the larder, to emerge later for the satisfaction of larger 
if not wiser mouths than theirs. The making of a tipsy- 
cake was the next anxious object of their consideration, to 
be followed by the zephyr-like concoction of a trifle, and 
then how many little hands were privileged to shake the 
hundreds and thousands over the frothed-up snowy mass! 
Then what delight to whip a syllabub, however unskillful- 
ly, till the mother seized the whisk, and presently the little 
queer-handled glasses were filled up and overflowing with 


22 


THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 


foam. Then there were the almonds to be peeled for the 
stone cream, and there was much washing of small hands 
for this operation, and scalding of the same in the mugs of 
boiling water provided for a different purpose, and as no 
broken almonds could be allowed to disgrace their mother ^s 
masterpiece, a great many took a short road to destruction, 
and the dish was not so handsomely spiked as usual that 
night. 

All these j)reparations went forward in the pantry, a large 
room looking on the street, and opposite the breakfast-room 
as one entered from the hall-door. Here Mrs. Bonnor had 
her china cupboards, and here she compounded her own 
salad-dressings and certain other delicacies in which she ex- 
celled the cook, and here Bet and Cecily each day arranged 
the flower- vases, and placed vine-leaves beneath the dessert, 
looking through the muslin blinds between whiles to see if 
by chance a new beau or an old one should be riding up the 
street. 

The kitchen fire, roaring half up the chimney, gave to- 
ken of unusual festivities agog, and the table boasted an 
immense sirloin of beef, just beginning to cool, a fine tur- 
key, flanked by a whole family of chickens, with its proper 
supplement, a boiled tongue, while several raised pies and 
fruit-tarts flanked a noble army of custards already set firm 
with a sprinkling of mace on their heads. 

Some pulled bread was in process of being taken from 
the oven, and the kitchen-maid with two pieces of wood was 
engaged in rolling up little golden balls of butter. 

“ I think there will be enough,” said Bet, looking round. 

I^m sure therein be enough to drink, at any rate,” 
said Kenneth, v;ho entered at this moment, carrying an im- 
mense stone jar; here’s the sherry, and Seth’s getting 
out the champagne — he’s going to hand it to me through 
the hole in the wall. ” 

And the lad set down the stone jar on the table and de- 
parted. 


THE FASHIOH OF THIS WORLD. 


23 


The dining-room was already empty, and the polished 
oak-boards awaited only a rubbing to be ready for dancing- 
feet. Clytie on her pedestal and the pictures on the walls 
had the place entirely to themselves. Hazel and Meg were 
suspending rustic baskets filled with fiowers beneath the 

* door- ways and arches of the hall, and Cecily was decorating 
the supper- table, laid in the yellow-room, in the very sim- 

* pie and primitive way of putting a thick border of roses 
upon the snowy linen, just above the wine-glasses, and 
lastly on a bowl turned upside down she made a great pile 
of fragrance and color, then sighed, and wished that the 
company expected were half as good as the preparations 
made in their honor. 

Sighing seemed to be in the air; but perhaps Kenneth^s 
was the sigh of exhaustion as he came in and out, stacking 
the bottles of Perrier Jouet against the wall on the what- 
not, and presently decanting the sherry out of jugs and ar- 
ranging them symmetrically on the table. 

It was Cecily who brought the syllabub and placed one 
for each person on the right hand of the plates that would 
come presently; and did in fact shortly appear, carried by 
Hazel and Meg, who did not disdain so beautiful a burden 
as the pure white Worcestershire ware with its border of 
deep blue. And now came the house-maids^ turn with their 
glass and silver, and the girls^ work below-stairs was done. 

‘‘Bet,^^ said Cecily, when they were together in the 
great drawing-room upstairs, stripping the covers from the 
satin chairs, what did you say to Hammett by the tank 
last night 

That it was a suitable spot for him to tumble backward 
and drown himself in, said Bet shortly. 

‘‘ Had he aspired too high, to fall so low?"^ said Cecily 
dryly. 

Sensible people doiiT aspire. They stand on a good, 
substantial, level bottom. And thaPs where all lovers 
ought to stand who know that flying is no good.^^ 


24 


THE FASHION OF THIS WOKLD. 


“ But some of them will fly, even if they come down with 
broken wings/ ^ said Cecily, with an unwonted note of feel- 
ing in her voice. 

Bet turned her head aside so that a blush, a quiver of the 
mouth, should not betray her. 

‘‘ Don^t you see that it is all nonsense and utter vanity 
she said. ‘‘Father would never consent to it, and we 
couldn^t settle down here under his very nose without it. 
And I would rather take a place as house-maid than live my 
life out in Cricklehorn. Look at those little wretches she 
added, her voice changing to one of wrath, her figure as- 
suming a belligerent attitude as she fiercely beckoned to 
some small objects scampering away in the distance. 
“ Come here, miss! Come here, sir!^^ 

But that gentle invitation not being responded to. Bet 
returned to her chairs and untied strings with extra vigor. 

“ Those children are unbearable,^'’ she said; “ and moth- 
er backs them up in everything. It is almost enough to 
drive one into marrjdng anybody P’ 

“We shall have to marry somebody, that^s certain,’^ said 
Cecily, as she drew close the green - shutters, and glanced 
down the long cool room, lovely with its faint-hued furni- 
ture of satin and rich with the pictures that glowed upon 
the walls. 

“ Why?^^ said Bet, sharply. 

“ Can’t you see that father is more worried than usual; 
that his going to town means business, and that if things 
go on as they are doing now, and expenses are not cut 
down, there will soon be no roof over our heads?” 

“ Then we must provide another,” said Bet flippantly, 
but her face was grave as she looked up and accidentally 
caught her own and her sister’s reflection in the long glass 
before them. 

Stephen was wont to tell his sisters that they were fortu- 
nate, inasmuch as nothmg so well made up for a missing 
understanding as a comely countenance and a bouncuig 


THE. FASHIOK OF THIS WORLD. 


25 


shape, and they knew that their square pew in church was 
not surrounded on Sunday evenings by young men for noth- 
ing, and that the pew-opener would not have received so 
many tips for placing the same near them unless their 
shapes and countenances were something out of the com- 
mon way. It was said in the county that it was the habit 
of the Bonnor family to be beautiful, and the style of this 
beauty was mostly fair, with hair that leaned now to bronze, 
now to dark, but the brows and lashes all dark, and the 
eyes blue. The noses were feminine, and the mouths, to 
all appearance, as agreeable for kissed as for conversation. 

To be sure. Bet was acquiring a pensive cast of comiten- 
ance, feeling that at twenty she was mellowing a bit, and 
her charms a little on the wane, and this drawback Cecily 
at eighteen was beginning to allow, and would not have 
been sorry to see Bet take that plunge into matrimony 
which, if gracefully taken, is so easily imitated — circum- 
stances permitting. 

Betsy Bonnor!^'' Seth would say, “ it sounds a little oH- 
color, donT it? YouVe been Betsy Bonnor such a long 
time. Though I don’t know that Betsy Garvock sounds 
any better. 

“ Yes,’^ said Bet, after a long j^ause. “We must marry, 
and if I get a good offer I shall shut my eyes to the shai)e 
of his nose and his hat.’^ 

“ AVhy should they be bad?’^ said Cecily. 

“ They are sure to be if his pockets are well lined. And 
as to love, Ces, why love — 

“ Too expensive a luxury,^^ said Cecily, with the serenity 
of one who has never felt it, “ and beyond The reach of us 
Bonnors.’"’ 

“ I donT know,^^ said Bet, looking out at the garden, as^ 
if she saw some unfamiliar sight; “ but I have a sort of 
feeling that some change in our lives is at hand, that this 
will be our last party, or at any rate the last in which we 
shall all be young, and foolish, and happy together.” 


26 


THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 


“We may be happy when we are wiser, said Cecily, 
sententiously. 

“ I doubt it,^^ said Bet, and sighed. 


CHAPTER IV. 

“ The blinded boy that shoots so trim 
From heaven down so high, 

He drew a dart and shot at him 
In place where he did lie.” 

A STRANGER looking in from the garden on Tom Bon- 
nor^s dining-room about ten o'’ clock that night, might have 
seen a very cheerful, inspiring sight. A party of young 
people were dancing, all cheerful, handsome, happy, en- 
joying the vigorous use of their limbs, and all, if more or 
less in love, not sufficiently so to make them sad. AVhat 
pure red and white carnations their faces showed, even the 
young men; the eldest there to-night has not turned 
twenty! How inexhaustibly the jig rolls out beneath Mrs. 
Bonnor^’s soft fingers, and the vicar, who stands beside her 
and looks on, glances now and again at Mrs. Bonnor^s cozy 
waist, and sighs! 

Every Jack to-night has got his own or his neighbor’s 
Jill; no one is sitting down, or made to feel that it is a 
disgrace to have anything to sit down upon, and that if not 
dancing, or walking about, she should float as a cherub. 
They do not get quickly out of breath, these young people 
— they seem to dance for pure love of it, and they laugh a 
good deal, and they talk nearly all the time, and do not 
stop until the' music ceases, when they look as fresh as if 
they had just begun. A shadow seems to retreat into the 
laurel-bush at the side of the window, as some of them ap- 
proach it and breathe the cool air, and some step over the 
sill and pace the gravel walks, others go round by the glass 
doors toward the conservatory, but Bet and Hammett re- 


THE FASHION^ OF THIS WORLD. 27 

main inside, looking out into the soft midsummer darkness 
of the night. Her bronze hair curls in a glorious mass 
down her neck, which is partly bare, of the same warm 
whiteness as the beautiful arms crossed lightly before her, 
and her blue eyes hold unusual thought as she gazes abroad. 

“ Bet,^^ says the dark, broad-shouldered, resolute-eyed 
young man, who seems so much older than any of the other 
dancers present to-night, ‘‘ will you give me an answer — 
yes or no?^^ 

A rustling of the laurel-hushes startled Bet at the mo- 
ment. She turned and went slowly away with him. 

“ What are you doing here, peeping?’"* said a child’s in- 
dignant voice in a man’s ear a moment later. 

“ And why aTe you not in bed?” he said, making out a 
little pale face on a level with his elbow. 

‘‘ Because I’m up. But who are you?” 

“ That’s my business.” 

I s’ pose you’re one of Bet’s beaus,” said the child, 
“ come to peep at her. But it’s very rude of you. Father 
would soon turn you out if he were at home.” 

“ Isn’t he at home?” 

Of course not, or we shouldn’t be having a party.” 

“Ah! Who are” these young men?” 

“ Garvocks and Yorkes. Are you going now?” 

“ No. Hush! they are coming back. Don’t speak.” 

He had taken both her hands in a firm, strong hold, and 
in spite of herself Audrey obeyed him. The vicar’s daugh- 
ter had begun to play a galop, in a minute or two a change 
of partners all round had been effected, and the scene was 
animated as before. 

“ Come with me,” said Audrey’s finknown companion, 
and skirting the light that poured through the windows, he 
led her round to the gravel walk outside the yellow room, 
and drawing close to it, looked in. 

“ And so,” he said, “ you have the carpet up in a room 
that will dance a hundred people, and in which you dance 


26 THE FASHIOK OF THIS WOKLD. 

some seven or eight couples. You decorate your table 
beautifully with roses, and many good things that it must 
have cost time and skill to prepare. And you take all this 
trouble for a handful of lads and lasses who require only to 
dance to be happy 

‘MVhy not?^^ said Audrey, stoutly. “ Why shouldnH 
we give our best to the friends that we know and value?^'’ 

‘‘ I like this simplicity,'’^ he said, as one speaking to him- 
self. How different from our London hospitality — the 
sneered-at host, the discussion of himself even at his own 
table, the ingratitude — 

He stopped abruptly, then said : 

‘‘ As you are too young to dance, and I am too old — ^ 
‘‘ Yes, you must be very old,'’'’ said Audrey, who had 
been attentively scanning him. ‘‘ You must be thirty-five 
years old. And I think you must be Mr. ISTewdegate.^^ 

And how old is Bet?^'’ he said, irrelevantly. 

“ Oh, she is getting old, too. She will be twenty this 
autumn. 

Is she engaged to that young man?'’^ 

I hope so. I do feel so inclined to peep inside their 
love-letters. They would help me so with my book. 

You are writing a book?^^ 

“ Of course. It takes up a great deal of my time.^^ 

‘‘ How old are you?^^ 

‘‘ Ten last birthday.-’^ 

‘‘ What time do these young people have supper 

At eleven. Are you hungry 
‘‘ I want to see them at it. Can we look in without be- 
ing discovered 

Yes. I will close one of the green blinds, and you can 
peep through. But it’s not exactly respectable conduct for 
a man of your age. '” 

Old people are not always respectable. Which of 
those lads were your brothers?’’ 


THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 


29 


‘‘ The two youngest. Stephen said he would not dance 
to-night, but he is dancing as much as anybody. 

‘‘ They are coming this way!^^ exclaimed Mr. Newdegate, 
and he drew Audrey into the conservatory, and behind a 
large oleander planted in a tub. 

Cecily and Jem Garvock came first. 

“ Oh, Cecily,^ ^ Jem was saying, in stuttering tones of 
love, “ wo-onH you, ca-anT you lo-ove me?^^ 

“ No, Jem,^^ she said; ‘‘ or at any rate, not until you '’re 
grown up. And you havenT even got a profession, like 
Hugh.^^ 

‘‘ Or a t-rade like Otho Yorke,^^ said Jem in a jealous 
voice. “ But I can g-go out s-sheep-farming to Aust-t- 
ralia — 

“ Where there are more farmers than sheep, said Ceci- 
ly, her voice dwindling as she moved on, and so the stut- 
tering lover and the hard-hearted fair passed out of ear- 
shot. 

‘‘ Now look here, Bet,-’^ said Hughes lazy voice, a little 
quickened by anger, ‘‘ you know you belong to me, and I 
won’t have you encouraging that manufacturing fellow, 
and making a fool of him.” 

Of yourself, you mean,” said Bet, gently. 

‘‘Not I,” said Hugh. “Though you may choose to 
amuse yourself with a tradesman, you would never serious- 
ly think of marrying him. ” 

“ Yet the Yorkes have good blood in their veins,” said 
Bet, gravely. “ See how very few of their names are in 
the Blue Book.” 

“ Because they are always to be found over the shops,” 
said Hugh, and in Bet’s momentary discomfiture at the 
retort, this pair, too, passed out of sight. 

“Mary,” said Stephen’s earnest young voice, next, as 
he came past with a young slim girl on his arm, who only 
reached to his shoulder, “don’t you get tired of doing 
nothing — even of enjoying yourself?” 


30 


THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 


“ No/' she said, ‘‘ for there is so much to do. I am 
never idle from one day's end to another, and the days seem 
only too short." 

And mine are so long," said the lad, with almost a 
groan. ‘‘ My work is child's play, and I want something 
to do in the world. " 

“ Do your duty," said Mary, ‘‘ and the rest will come. 
Do you ever read your duty to your neighbor?" she added 
in her gentle voice that yet had a sweet under-current of 
mirth: 

Like unto a hidden brook 
In the leafy month of June, 

That to the quiet woods all night 
Singeth a quiet tune.” 

Not often," said Stephen; I am afraid I think 
of tener of what my neighbor's duty is to me. " 

“I'll tell you what it is. Hazel," said another voice, 
striking in on this dialogue, “ you’ve danced twice more 
with that fellow, Walter Yorke, than you've danced with 
me. " 

“He dances better," said Hazel, tall and slim for her 
sixteen years, her curly hair tied back from her face with a 
blue ribbon. 

“ It seems to me you all think they do everything better 
than we Garvocks do," said the grumbling voice; “ I've a 
good mind to hire myself out as a draper's assistant in the 
town, unless old Yorke will engage me at his factory; per- 
haps you'd think more of me then?" 

“ I think I should," Hazel said, meditatively. 

I'm hanged. Hazel, if I don't believe you care more 
for that fellow than you do for me."^ 

“ You are just two boys," said Hazel, “ and I am grown 
up. " 

“ I am a year older than you are, and you are not up to 
my shoulder. Now, Hazel, will you promise to marry me 
when I've settled down?" 


THE FASHIOH OF THIS WOKLD. 


31 


‘‘ When will that be, Rexr^^ 

‘‘ Oh, in a year or two. The governor will find some- 
thing or other for me to do. 

Bat couldnT you find it for yourself?’^ 

Their receding voices crossed those of returning ones; 
soon they all mingled and approached the house; in less 
than a minute they were throwing themselves heart and 
soul into the last dance before supper. 

You live in Arcadia, said Mr. Newdegate to Audrey; 
but do little girls of ten usually stay up so late as this?^^ 
“ Our governess went away ill last Aveek,^^ said the child, 
‘‘ and mother is too busy to find another. So I do what 
I please all day, and play gooseberry in the evening. 

‘‘ Are you playing it to-night.^^^ 

“No. But I am keeping my eyes on Bet. Bet is a 
flirt, you know. Hark! they are going in to supper. Now 
you can peep. She led him past the triangular flower-bed 
of geraniums, their scarlet noAV black in the gloom, then 
walked on tiptoe upon the pavement, and softly drew one 
of the outside green shutters to. 

All the yoimg people were gathering round the table, 
healthy, hungry, vigorous, with love or its semblance 
thrust into the background, and all so hospitably intent on 
serving one another that jealousies vanished and rivals 
buried the hatchet as they plied the carving-knife and fork 
in each other^s behalf. Mr. Newdegate looked through 
the green shutter, and his critical taste was satisfied. It 
was all so SAveet, so pure, all those young eyes were so 
honest, and if these young men (there was not a full-grown 
mustache in the room) had snatched a kiss now and again, 
was there much harm in it? The girls seemed to have a 
true, hearty liking for the boys among whom they had 
grown up and romped themselves into maidens, and their 
love-making appeared to Mr. Newdegate harmless as a lot 
of birds twittering on a bough. He was glad to see that 
the girls drank very little champagne, but eat at once dili- 


32 THE FASHIO^’^ OF THIS WORLD. 

gently and gracefully, and when the young men swallowed 
sweets, he thought it an encouraging sign for their future 
constitutions, even if their intellects were not thereby ad- 
vanced. Mrs. Bonnor had forgotten her initation of the 
morning, and was happy. The vicar beside her was happy, 
too, and his mood reflected itself on hers. She looked at 
her blooming children, at the young Garvocks, familiar to 
her from their birth, at the Yorkes, who held the secret 
key to her own heart in that they were motherless, and she 
had that grasp of love that could hold more than her chil- 
dren, though having admitted these strangers she had 
locked the door on all others, and was cold and reticent to 
the world in general. 

Mr. Yewdegate looked at them long. Himself unseen, 
he studied eveiy face, heard every intonation of speech, 
mastered the meaning of every innocent and serious face 
there; then he turned, and finding no Audrey near him, 
went quietly away through one of the numerous exits to 
the house, and issuing on the town, found his hotel and 
slept. 

But when he woke up in the morning, he said to himself, 

I shall marry Bet,'^ and he dressed himself and break- 
fasted in the frame of a wooer. 


CHAPTER V. 

“ In Celia’s face a question did arise.” 

It was usual for the Bonnor legs to ache soundly after 
one of those homely entertainments which they designated 
as a ‘‘ party. 

* But if fatigue fettered their limbs, conscience rapped 
soundly at their mind^s door and woke them, announcing 
carpets to be put down, furniture restored to its lawful 
place, hanging baskets to be lowered out of space, and a 
general air of monotonous order restored to the house. 


THE FASHIOH OF THIS WORLD. 


33 


So that it was barely ten clock when Bet, standing on 
a hall-chair, both arms up-lifted in the act of unhooking 
a trophy of roses, felt something unusual in the neighbor- 
hood, and looking down with a start, half expecting to see 
her father,^spied a stranger. 

Audrey had kept her own counsel, and as overnight he 
had entered the grounds unobserved by a single servant, 
there had been no one to announce that Tom Bonnor^s 
friend had been witness to the revels of Tom Bonnor^s 
daughters. 

‘‘ Can I help you?^^ said Mr. Newdegate in a pleasant 
tone, and raising his hands to relieve her. 

She lowered the basket into his arms, still looking down 
as he was looking up, and the faint color in her cheek 
glowed and spread as his eyes held hers, and swift through 
her heart darted that unerring instinct of having found 
her master that is a step toward love with a true w^oman, 
and as. full of fear as it is delicious. 

‘‘You are Mr. Newdegate,^^ she said, as she stepped 
down, “ and father will be very glad to see you.'’^ 

Through the open dining-room door came the sounds of 
laughter and the smart tap of a shuttlecock driven by two 
battledoors, and Mr. Newdegate appeared to listen for a 
moment before he said : 

“ And are you glad to see me?’^ 

Perhaps he forgot that though he had secretly studied 
her, this was her first opportunity of passing judgment on 
him. 

“ I may be, she said, and dared to look him over in a 
way that was born in Eve and has been transmitted to her 
latest descendants. “ But first you must make yourself 
useful. Father will be back in three hours, and everything 
must be in order, just as if we had not been dancing last 
night. 

“ Does he object to dancing?^^ 

“ No. But he does not like young — young men.^^ 

2 


34 


THE FASHION OF THIS WOKLD. 


‘‘ And his daughters do?^^ 

“ Perhaps when you were young, sir, you liked to talk to 
old women 

“Sometimes/^ 

“ Then perhaps you like it still. Here is mother. Do 
you know, there are thirteen of us? And Pm t£e third. 

It seemed only her elder, and as lovable a copy, who 
came slowly down the curving staircase, leading a little 
child by the hand. 

As she turned the comer to the central passage of the 
house, Bet came a little forward and said : 

“ Mother, this is Mr. Newdegate.^^ 

“ I shall like her for a mother-in-law,^'’ he thought, as 
he took her hand, and she wished him welcome, but with a 
slight uneasiness of manner that he well understood, and 
that Bet proceeded to interpret gravely. 

“ We had a little dance last night,^^ she said, “ and we 
did not ask father’s permission before he went, though I 
think he guesses that we amuse ourselves when he is away. 
Only you will not speak of it to him, please, or you will 
vex mamma — or me.” 

Mr. Newdegate bowed. 

“ I will remember,” he said, and added: “ It is strange 
that I have not made the acquaintance of my old friend’s 
wife before, but I think I went abroad immediately before 
your marriage. ” 

“ And you have brought no wife back?” said Mrs. 
Bonnor, with that gentle indifference of manner she showed 
to all strangers. 

“No; but I have found one in England,” he said in a 
quiet, matter-of-fact tone. 

“ Your room is prepared,” said Mrs. Bonnor, when she 
had murniured some words of congratulation; “ and where 
shall I send for your luggage?” 

“It is at the hotel. I will see about it by and by. 


THE FASHIOIT OF THIS WORLD. 35 

Meanwhile, perhaps Miss Elizabeth will show me her 
roses?' ^ 

Bet started. ‘‘How do you know that is my name?" 
she said. 

“ Perhaps I know something of your disposition, too," 
he said, as they passed through the glass doors and stood 
on the lawn. “ What would you say if I told you that I 
was eavesdropping in this garden last night?" 

“That you must have altered very much since father 
found you wise enough to make a friend of you," said Bet 
indignantly. “ And, pray, were you very much shocked at 
all you overheard — and saw?" 

“ It was all very innocent," said Mr. Eewdegate, in his 
pleasant, well-bred voice, but with his eyes fixed full on 
Bet. 

“ Have you no innocent pleasures abroad?" she said, a 
little coldly. 

“ Perhaps. But one must be young — as young as you 
are — to enjoy them. Will you give me a rose?" 

She gave him one small enough for the button-hole in 
which he placed it, and they turned their faces toward the 
house. 

‘‘ Do you know that I am very busy this morning?" she 
said smiling; “as we get all the enjoyment out of the 
dance, mother leaves us to do all the putting away after it; 
and now I am going to put away the china. " 

“ I shall come and help," he said promptly. 

“ Do," said Bet, as they went together into the pantiy 
that looked on* the street, and Bet pulled a chair to the 
cupboard and climbed upon it, and Mr. Newdegate began 
to bring the plates and dishes from the table and hand 
them up to her. 

“ I hope," he said, when he had made his seventh jour- 
ney, that my wife will be as housewifely as you are." 

“ And I hope," said Bet, “ that yoii will always be as 
ready with your assistance to her as you are to me to-day." 


36 


THE FASHIOH OF THIS WOKLD. 


Her back was toward him; even while he admired its 
beauty and the grace of her uplifted arms he smiled to 
himself at the shade of constraint in her tone, and knew 
its cause. 

‘‘ I am afraid we have no china cupboards like this in 
town/^ he said, ‘‘and no little bowls like these. He 
lifted one as he spoke, and reversed it in search of a gold 
crown. 

“Yes, it is Crown Derby, said Bet, looking down. 
‘ ‘ Mother had a great many of them once, and we have 
eaten our gooseberry fool out of them ever since I can re- 
member. In town perhaps you would put them on the 
mantel-piece, but in the country we keep our china to eat 
upon and to eat out of.^^ 

“ Do you look as grave over your gooseberry fool as you 
do over the empty bowl to-day he said as he brought 
some more plates. 

Bet looked at him, and the vexation in her mind van- 
ished in the sunshine of a peal of laughter. 

“ Were you not tired of hearing all the noise we made 
lastnight?^’ she said; “ but indeedit is only once in awhile 
that we are so mad as that.^^ 

“ It is good to be young,^ ^ he said, “ and to be sometimes 
mad. But perhaps those young men whom I saw you 
dancing with will not throw off their madness as easily as 
you do. 

“ They are only boys,^^ said Bet, as she locked the cup- 
board; but she had the grace to blush a little as she said it. 

“And, of course, boys have no hearts to be broken, 
said Mr. Newdegate. 

“ Have men?’^ said Bet innocently, taking the hand up- 
lifted to help her descent. 

‘ ‘ They have probably broken theirs, and got them 
mended again. •’* 

“ I think I prefer hearts, like china, uncracked, said 
Bet, as she reached the ground. 


THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 


37 


“ Then you must be satisfied with your own.^^ 

Bet laughed as they walked side by side to the door. 
Outside, a shabby little figure waited, that seemed to 
shun Mr. Newdegate’s observation, as it thrust a little 
three-cornered billet into Bet^s hand. 

“ He is waiting for an answer,^ said Audrey, in a child^s 
shrill whisper, “ and Hugh is in the pyramid orchard. If 
you donT come out, perhaps they will be fighting again. 

“ Let them,^^ said Bet, with supreme disdain, and push- 
ing away the child’s outstretched hand with the note inside 
it. “ And now you are to go and tell them both — both, I 
say — that I am not coming out this morning, as I am in- 
doors talking to an old, a very old friend of father’s. ” 


CHAPTER VI. 

“ But she that welcomes my bricht bride 
Maun gang like maidenhair; 

She maun lace her in her green cleiding, 

And braid her yellow hair. ” 

When the Bonnor girls took an airing it was customary 
for all Crickiehorn to rush to its windows to see what they 
had got on. Factory girls were in the habit of saying to 
their tawdry dress-makers, ‘‘ Fix me up lixe the Miss 
Bonnors; I ;gatronize the Miss Bonnor style.” If lilac were 
the color chosen for their new spring tints, a wave of lilac 
would on the following Sunday spread through the church ; 
if they wore black or white lace mittens in summer-time, 
then every Frowzibella would display her hard red knuckles 
and redder arms; if they discarded boots for shoes, then on 
every fiat instep would shine a flatter buckle, while the set 
of their bonnet strings occasioned many a half hour’s 
anxious imitation before many a cracked looking-glass in 
Crickiehorn. But where the Bonnors finally established 
themselves beyond all competition w^as in wearing white 


oS THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 

and white only, and very expensive wear it was. Those 
little hoods of white fox fur or swan^s-down, those tippets, 
muffs, and borders of the same to their white serge in 
winter, were a frame-work of simplicity itself to their charm- 
ing faces, in comparison with the airy conceits, the snowy 
billows of muslin and lace that floated about them in sum- 
mer; while spring and autumn had each their own delicate 
and distinctive recognition in the dress of Tom Bonnor^s 
daughters. 

I am sure he liked to see them so, and perhaps he did 
not think of the cost, though Mrs. Bonnor did, but she 
w^as a woman of no expensive tastes, and was extravagant 
in nothing but babies, so she murmured only at the weekly 
w^ashing bills, and was never really angry save when the 
family linen-draper’s bill registered various new dresses, 
fichus, etc., that had been bought and worn under her own 
innocent nose without her being in the least aware that 
they were new. But the well-born virgins of the town and 
their mammas elevated their eyes and noses at the waste- 
fulness of the Bonnor mode of attire, and never failed to 
foretell a time when sackcloth and ashes, or the nearest 
cheap substitute for that very inconvenient style of dress, 
w^ould cover the worthless backs now so uselessly and beau- 
tifully adorned. Nevertheless, every Sunday morning every 
eye in Cricklehorn Church would be strained on the great 
door- way that opened on the nave of the beautiful old abbey 
church, and when Tom Bonnor crossed the threshold lead- 
ing his little daughter Patty by the hand, his elder ones be- 
hind him, Audrey excepted, the boys surrounding their 
mother, who came last, necks would be craned, whispers 
exchanged, and heads violently nodded in the distance, so 
that by the time the aisle was reached. Bet and Cecily 
could hold their heads up with the proud consciousness that 
the whole visual power of the congregation was bent upon 
them. 

Now on the Sunday that followed Mr. Newdegate’s ar- 


THE FASHIOK OP THIS WORLD. 


39 


rival (he came on Friday) the entry into church was more 
triumphant than usual, and intense curiosity as to who ho 
could be, burned in the bosom of every female, high or 
low, present. 

When he had looked into his hat and put it away, he 
stood up with the rest, and everybody understood the state 
of the case directly — for he was standing beside Bet. The 
big square pew held a dozen easily, and why, pray, when 
he had a choice of more than one corner, must he go and 
sit in that young woman’s pocket? And so demure as she 
looked, too, as if she had been used to his being there every 
day of her life! As to his looks, well at least two, if not 
more, of the young men present were studying him with 
the keenest attention, and, taking him from totally different 
points of view, both were silently agreed that he was a man 
to hold his own anywhere, and a more formidable rival 
than either of them had yet found in the other. 

Hugh’s position in the organ loft, a spot to which he 
sometimes betook himself for the better observation of 
things in general, gave him a bird’s-eye view of the Bonnor 
pew, so that he could watch his faithless fair’s every move- 
ment, while Hammett saw her only in her up-risings and 
down-sittings, and still watched for that turn of her head 
which would enable her eyes to meet his. 

Too hurt and proud to approach her since Audrey had 
brought him back his despised note, he had yet pictured 
her as only in one of her petulant moods, aggravated, per- 
haps, by this tiresome friend of her father’s, but Mr. 
Nevvdegate’s appearance routed this idea, and a slow, som- 
ber pain began to grow and deepen in his heart. Hugh 
took matters more easily; there was a future epicure m this 
listless young man, destined a few years later to be as brill- 
iant a soldier as he was dashing dragoon in a regiment 
famous for its tlan and the hospitality it dispensed en 
grand seigneur, no matter in which quarter of the globe it 
happened to find itself. 


40 


THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 


Mr. Xewdegate’s eyes took in everything, the envious 
glances of the women, the now open, now covert, regards 
of the men; he saw the curate peeping behind his book, 
caught the wicked little eyes of the lawyer fixed upon Bet 
in the background, saw the elegant get-up of the young 
sparks who had come from a distance, and noted the quieter 
one of those nearer home, and then he looked at his friend 
Tom, and wondered if he had noted all these things too. 

But Tom was just then thinking how well Mrs. Bonnor^s 
new j^ink crape bonnet became her; he had brought it back 
himself from town, but he had kept back from her some 
information that would have made her wear it with a heavy 
heart. Gradually his eye traveled round the pew and rest- 
ed on each one of his smart and blooming regiment, and 
he thought how admirably his girls supported the nuisance 
of being stared at (though, iDray, sir, when you were young 
and looked at a pretty girl, did you ever suppose she found 
your gaze a nuisance?). Then he started a little as he 
came to Mr. Xewdegate, as if he had forgotten him, and 
wondered to see him there; then both men, good friends, 
though with twelve years’s difference between them, smiled 
a little, and both their faces were pleasant to see. 

Many people saw the glance exchanged, and every spin- 
ster and virgin within sight fixed Miss Bet^s wedding-day 
at not a morning less than six weeks hence. And for her 
to marry such a man as this, after flii’tmg for years with 
Hugh Garvock and Hammett Yorke, and half a dozen 
others, no doubt, if the truth were known! She was not 
insensible of the effect produced by the man sitting by her 
side. Already, after two days’ bare acquaintance, she 
recognized in him the quiet self-reliance of speech, the ease 
of a cultivated man who could amuse himself as easily with 
trifies as with stories of history; already she felt a sense of 
repose in his presence new to her after the more or less 
turbulent, restless company of young men whose minds had 
yet to be formed, and who now, with the exception of Ham- 


THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 


41 


mett, showed to her very much in the same light,, they had 
done to her brother. Poor Hammett! What was he, too, 
but a boy, compared with this man? A jealous, earnest, 
desperate boy, she thought, as she stole a half glance at his 
pale and burning lips, and she must send him about his 
business, and very likely Hugh as well. 

Her thoughts did not long linger on either, for strange as 
it may appear to an ordinary young woman, Bet actually 
went to church to pray — as did her sisters — and though no 
one would have called them a religious family there was an 
honest fundamental belief in the faith they had learned at 
their mother's knee, that they carried with them through 
life, and that strengthened their principles and steadied 
them in the path of honor they had unconsciously trodden 
from birth. 

Mr. Newdegate admired them afresh for this simple, 
serious worship, and said to himself that when he got Bet 
for his wife she should hear none of that clever, unsettling 
talk with which wise men take away a weak woman's relig- 
ion and give her no other to replace it. 

And I think he went out of church by Bet's side a better 
and happier man than he had felt for some fifteen or more 
years. 


CHAPTER VH. 

“ I have lost the sound child-sleeping 
Which the thunder could not break, 

Something, too, of the strong leaping 
Of the stag- like heart awake. . 

Audrey had been in disgrace ever since five o'clock that 
morning, when, in the face of its being the Sabbath day, 
she had inveigled various youths and maidens of tender 
years out of bed under the pretense of taking them mush- 
rooming. Away, then, through the clear, beautiful morn- 
ing she sped, with the train of little brothers and sisters be- 


42 


THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 


hind her, all stumbling, eager and happy, firmly believing 
that they would find a green field buttoned all over with 
pale pink and white with which they would fill their small 
skirts and pockets, and hasten home with them to make 
that breakfast dish for “ mother """ which Audrey desired. 
For, alas, nearly all Audrey ^s erring actions and escapades 
originated in some unselfish impulse, some earnest desire 
to do somebody good, or to please somebody; and if such 
attempts invariably ended in ruin to herself and discomfort 
to those she wished to benefit, wdiy her case was no uncom- 
mon one, and possibly she was learning bitter 2diilosophy 
at the expense of sentiment early. 

But when she came to the meadow that had so often 
yielded uj) to her its treasures, she stopped short confound- 
ed, for she had forgotten the season, and only lush grass, 
with its sister-blades of cold and waving grace lay spread 
before her eyes, ready for the mowers^ scythes that would 
lay it low on the morrow. 

DoiFt see no niushrums!^^ said Patty, a little round, 
blue-eyed, sweet-faced dumpling of six. S'^posing we 
crawls a bit and looks, Davy?” 

But Audrey, who might lead her youngers into a scrape, 
yet took care of them when they got there, would not allow 
this, and got them home quite early and not much the 
worse for their trip, save in the matter of having reduced 
their clean clothes to the condition of yesterday ^s ones. 

Before the storm of nurse wrath, the child fled to the 
narrow strip of a room, with an oriel window framed by a 
pear-tree, that she called her own. There she sat down on 
the low window-ledge, hugging her knees, and with a bitter 
sense of hopelessness and despair creeping through her 
heart. Always in the wrong, always scouted, scolded, 
thrust on one side, always most misunderstood when she 
meant best, with confused passionate feelings ever striving 
in her toward right, and a soul in her ever struggling iq)- 
ward after the light that it knew not where to find; what 


THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 


43 


could she do,, how could she transform herself so that some 
of the love that glowed so ahundantly around her should be 
diverted a little into her direction? 

She knew that she was plain, and to know this and to be 
constantly reminded of it was in itself torture to the highly 
strung nervous organization that had so keen a sense of 
beauty and so intense a comprehension of it, that often her 
heart would ache from the joy it gave her. 

I suppose it is only born in some people to have their 
senses so exquisitely alive as to be able to draw into their 
souls as easily the pale gold of a laburnum waving against 
the sky, as to find pleasure in merely hearing two human 
voices conversing; to feel as keen a rapture in the mere 
touch of a flower as in the delight its scent affords you, or 
to blend taste and sight into one perfect harmony as you 
taste the first-fruits of the year. To Audrey had been 
given one of these magnificent organizations, to her also 
had been given the passion so invariably found with her 
complexion and hair, and that occasionally starlled those 
about her, for, alas! poor Audrey, no matter what your 
hereafter may be, but few signs of a gentle spirit have 
shown themselves in you yet. She would cry with such 
force and fury that all strength would go out of her hands, 
and she would lie almost pulseless for hours, she would give 
back blow for blow, word for word, she would say words 
prompted of devils, when once she was fully roused, and 
had laid good claim to hei' secondary title of vixen long 
ago. Mrs. Bonnor stood appalled at these attacks of tem- 
per; she did not understand the proud and often unjustly 
wounded spirit, and she shrunk more than ever from this 
unbeautiful child, who was alwlaysin extremes, or as Cecily 
said, ‘‘ always in moods and tenses — chiefly intense. Tom 
Bonnor had perseveringly whipped her every few days from 
the ages of three to six, but now he let her alone, perhaps 
aware that his indifference cut her more deeply than any 
punishment. But she bore him no malice, any more than 


44 THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 

the others who came between her and that keen enjoyment 
of life to which she was born, and in her dreams of the fut- 
ure, when she should be a great woman, she often pictured 
herself coming home to them all, her hands full of gifts for 
them, and they all hurrying out to meet her, as proud of 
her then as they had once been ashamed of' her. This 
thought never failed to give her comfort in her deepest 
woes, and it brought her some to-day. It supported her 
through breakfast, and the lecture from both parents deliv- 
ered thereat; it did not give way under the spiteful nips 
and throttlings administered by nurse in dressing her for 
the New Church, to which she went each Sunday with 
Stephen and Kenneth. She did not wear white like the 
rest, but a brown bombazine and an ugly hat, but on the 
point of starting (all the rest being gone) she produced 
from her pocket a bright red ribbon, and having tied up 
her equally red locks with the same, was happy. Both 
Stephen and Kenneth remonstrated, but in vain. They 
were used to her perverse love of the color, and used also to 
see her rush from the wildest extremes of untidiness to fits 
of vanity, in which she would do her hair in a double row 
of curls from the parting, and then she w^as just like a 
S2)aniel, and more pleased with herself than usual. 

On this particular Sunday morning she had been too de- 
jected to curl herself j^roperly, but coming out of church 
Steifiien observed her face so bright with an idea that he 
asked her what it was. 

It's my book," she said. “ I was going to ask you a 
great favor about it, Steve. " 

“ Well, what is it?" 

‘‘ If you wouldn't mind letting me read you some of it — 
you must be quite out of sight, you know, in the cupboard 
or somewhere — and just tell me what you think of it." 

“ But I'm no judge of novels. Carrots," said Stephen 
kindly. “The girls read tons, and they'd know in a 
minute if you had got a 2)ro2)er notion of a book. " 


THE FASHIOH OF THIS WORLD. 


45 


‘‘They wouldn't listen," said Audrey, hardly able to 
speak for disappointment, “ or if they did they'd only laugh 
at me. And if any one laughed at that book," said the 
child, stopping short in the street and stamping her foot 
passionately, “ I'd hill them." 

“ You'd much better take off that red ribbon before 
mother sees it," said Kenneth practically. “The old 
church is out, and you'd better run. And as to your 
nursery tale stuff, I don't mind hearing you read it myself 
this afternoon in the cellar, wliile I'm setting my rat 
gins. " 


CHAPTER VIIL 

“ Hope, like a gleaming taper’s light.” 

Oh Sunday afternoons the Bonnor girls invariably ad- 
journed to the kitchen garden, where they discoursed in 
couples on the we,ek's doings, and their beaus. 

This Sunday was no exception to the rule, and by three 
o'clock Bet and Cecily might have been seen sitting on the 
steps beneath the arched door- way, just now all twined and 
bound with purple flowers, while in the distance walked 
Hazel and Meg, arm-in-arm, and as deeply absorbed in their 
subject as if it had been created brand new that day. 

Audrey was invisible, she being at that moment descend- 
ing the cellar stairs with trembling knees and bumjiing 
heart, against which latter she hugged tightly an old 
morocco pocket-book, out of which some shabby papers 
peeped. 

She found Kenneth arrived before her when she reached 
the cool, wide place that, lighted by the gratings from the 
street, had the atmosphere of an ice-house in the sultriest 
summer weather. He was seated on a barrel, beside which, 
in graceful anticipation of her arrival, he had placed a 
smaller one, and now begged her to rattle her tale through 


46 


THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 


as quickly as she could, as he could only spare her a quar- 
ter of an hour. 

‘‘ But it^s a novel cried Audrey. ‘‘ I counted the 
words in ‘ The Love Match/ and Fve got nearly half as 
many, and i/s not nearly done yet!^^ 

She opened the pocket-book and showed the pages all 
written in, scored and blotted, the characters in some places 
mere hieroglyphics that represented the agonies their com- 
position had cost her. Kenneth groaned. 

‘‘Oh! I say,^^ he ejaculated, “it would take a square 
twelvemonth to read all that, and of course there ought to 
be an end it. Suppose you write the end, and then read 
me a little bit at a time. When IVe read my own papers, 
you know, I am hard up for amusement. 

Bitter disappointment paled poor Audrey^s cheek as she 
stood looking down on the despised work of two patient 
years, and Kenneth, glancing up from the gin he was 
mending, saw it. 

“ There, old girl,^^ he said, kindly; “ of course 1^11 hear 
it all some day, but haven T you got some nursery tale or 
short story, or something of that sort?’^ 

“ No,^^ said Audrey, almost inaudibly, “ IVe only got 
some poetry. 

“ Poetry ejaculated Kenneth. “ Oh, good Lord! 
But fire away,^^ he added, anxious to please her, and with 
a certain hope that she would justify the pride that he 
secretly cherished in her intellectual attainments. 

But Audrey did not immediately fire away. When she 
had choked her tears back and selected a barrel almost out 
of sight and ear-shot, she unfolded a paper that crackled 
in her trembling hand, and she cleared her throat thrice 
before she got out, in a shaking voice: 

“ Can there be Eternity?'^ 

“ Can there be a turnstile?’" echoed Kenneth. “ Well, 
that’s a rum beginning for a poem, ain’t it?” 

“ I said eternity cried poor Audrey, wincing in every 


THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 47 

sensitive nerve of her body, but ashamedof the cowardice of 
running away. 

Then I s^pose you mean it for a conundrum/^ said 
Kenneth, “ and I give it up.^^ 

No, it is a question. Heroes the answer: 

“ There can, if God so wills that there shall be, 

And He has willed it, tho’ we can not see 
Into the depths of great futurity.” 

Of course we canT see,^^ said Audrey^s critic, as he 
drew himself a cup of cider, ‘‘ and we don^t want to, 
either.'’’ 

“ Not want to?” exclaimed Audrey, turning right round 
and flashing two brilliant eyes upon him. ‘‘ Hasn’t it kept 
you awake nights and nights till your head was giddy and 
your body even went round — trying to think how one could 
live on forever, and ever, and everf^ 

“ We’ve got to make sure of that,” said Kenneth, star- 
ing at her in astonishment. ‘‘ What we do know is, that 
we’re ticked off pretty sharp down below. I say, you’re 
not going to turn Psalm singer, are you?” 

Psalm singers don’t write poetry,” said Audrey, with 
dignity. ‘‘ Of course David lorote, but he didn’t sing. I 
didn’t expect you’d care much about tliis, but I’ll read you 
a few more lines further on in the poem, you know — 

' “ So, as a rocket from the shore, 

• Flashing amidst the tempest’s roar. 

Illumines what was dark before. 

Broad on my soul a light there broke ” 

Very good, that,” said Kenneth approvingly. “ Tem- 
pest’s roar and the rocket apparatus — capital! Whereon 
earth did you pick up the idea?” 

At the sea last summer,” said Audrey, feeling warmed 
by his praise, and closing the book lest any succeeding lines 
should mar the good effect produced. 

I shouldn’t wonder,” said Kenneth, looking at her with 


48 THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 

some admiration, if, after all, youll do. YoiiVe got a 
wonderful knack .of words, and a terrific command of lan- 
guage."" 

He stopped short, not wishing to spoil his compliment 
by illusions to her temper, but continued, briskly: 

“ A command of language. Carrots, that ought to fill 
your pages up double-quick, and with rattling good quality, 
too. And if you"d write about something rather more 
lively than eternity — say in the style of the ‘ Ratcatcher"s 
Daughter " — I don"t see why you shouldn"t be famous by 
the time you" re twenty."" 

Oh, thank you, dear Ken!"" cried Audrey, rushing at 
him as he rose from fixing his last gin. Perhaps you"ll 
let me read the rest of it to you to-morrow?"" 

‘‘ Oh, yes,"" said Ken, “ that is to say, if it"s all as good 
as that. I say! you didn"t steal those lines, did you?"" he 
added, looking at her with sudden suspicion. 

Certainly not,"" cried Audrey, indignantly. ‘‘ I wrote 
them fifty times over before I got them right, and the 
longest words I spelled out of the dictionary."" 

Kenneth nodded and kissed her as they chmbed the 
cellar stairs together and presently parted on the lawn. 
He observed that she had a wistful look, and still hugged 
the pocket-book to her breast, so he turned back to say: 

“ Why don"t you go and read some of it to Bet and 
Cecily? They"re sure to be yawning somewhere in the gar- 
den, and father won"t let old Kewdegate out for another 
good hour."" 

This was good advice, and Audrey hastened to take it. 
Prom afar off she saw the two pliant figures that seemed to 
lend themselves to the arch of the trellised door, but her 
heart sunk deeper anl deeper into her shoes as she softly ap- 
proached them. 

‘‘ I will not be made sure of by any man,"" Bet was say- 
ing, ‘‘ and there is something in his eye that says, ‘ You are 
mine and when I beckon to you, you will come," and when 


THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 


49 


he does ask me, Ces, I will say ‘ Xo, no, nol^ and astonish 
him. 

But will you keep on saying ‘ Xo^?^^ said Cecily dryly. 

Xot if substituting a ‘ Yes ^ will please me better. 
Well, Carrots?’^ 

Are you very busy talking said poor Audrey, who in 
her agonized preoccupation had not overheard a word, 
because if not, I should be so — so grateful if you would 
let me read to you a little while — it is nothing dull, it is a 
novel, but I should be so glad of your opinion about it. 

‘‘Xo, go away,^^ said Bet, carelessly, but Cecily, who 
understood better the eager anxiety in the little, ugly face, 
said: 

Let her read; she won^t disturb us,^’ and so Audrey 
found a cold seat upon the stone step of the grape-house 
some half a dozen yards away; and, within easy ear-shot, 
but out of sight of her sisters, began, after several futile 
searches after her voice, to read. 

Gradually her voice strengthened; she ceased to listen for 
the faint sounds of what might be either mirth or astonish- 
ment, and warmed to her work, when the presence of some- 
thing close at hand made her look up with a start to behold 
Mr. Xewdegate. She closed the book instantly, and a look 
of passionate anger shot from her eyes. 

So you^re listening again, she asked. 

‘‘ Yes,^^ he said, and I can tell you all about your . 
story. You have a good young woman in it who has golden ’ 
hair, and a bad young woman who has red hair, and they 
are sisters and both in love with Edward, who rides on a 
white horse, and loves Golden-hair. Then Bed-head, mad 
with jealousy, resolves to separate -them, sets fire to the 
house in which her sister is sleeping, herself escapes, and 
having dyed her hair a beautiful gold color, appears before 
Edward and informs him that Bed-head has perished in 
the flames. Now what does Edward do? You were com- 
ing to that when I discovered myself. ^ ^ 


50 


THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 


“ You cau find out/^ said Audrey; and I want my 
sisters^ oifinion, not yours/'' 

She j unified up as she spoke and ran the few steps that 
divided her from them, only to find that, alas! poor critics, 
sleep had overcome them in his most tender guise, and in- 
clined their heads ever so gently toward their fair bosoms, 
while from their idle hands was sli^iping the fruit with 
which they had been dallying before Audrey^s voice and 
matter had insensibly closed their eyes. 

‘MV hat pretty creatures!"^ said Mr. Newdegate, half 
aloud, “ but I am afraid a little selfish. Come with me, 
Audrey,^ ^ he added, in quite a different tone, “ I want to 
talk to you.^^ 


CHAPTER IX. 

“ I only would have leave to loose 
(In tears and blood, if so he choose) 

Mine inward music to use.” 

Along the graveled walk that Mr. Xewdegate had but 
just now walked, shod in the shoes of silence, he now led 
Audrey, who went passionately and unwillingly, feeling as 
if the most silent, trembling secrets of her heart had been 
roughly bared to a stranger^s eyes, and those mocking ones. 

When he had made her sit down beside him under a crab- 
apple-tree, sufficiently retired to insure privacy, he said to 
her, “ Now, tell me, Audrey, all about your writing and all 
you wish to do and be, and let me see if I can help you.^^ 

But Audrey, her head bowed upon her huddled-up knees, 
was sobbing fiercely, and almost without sound, the mag- 
nificent billows of her red hair falling over and hiding the 
shabby book that had held all her treasure for so long. 

“ Child, he said, “ why do you cry so? You will have 
time enough for that by and by. Keep your childhood and 
enjoy it while you can. Then you will write all the better 
when you grow up. 


THE FASHIOK OF THIS WORLD. 51 

Audrey’s stubborn sobs ceased. She half looked at him 
through her veil of hair, and said: 

“ Are you laughing at me now?” 

“ I have not been laughing at you at all.” 

Yes, you have! You were laughing just now about 
my poor Edward, and about Clorinda — ” 

Which was Clorinda?” 

The heroine, to be sure. But .oh! to think it’s so dull 
that it sent Bet and Cecily clean off to sleep!” 

‘‘ But it can’t be very dull if, as you say, it made me 
laugh.” 

Audrey hugged her knees closer, and looked at him. 

‘‘ You’re a man,” she said, ‘‘ and must know a lot about 
everything. Do you think a little girl who was always 
trying hard to do something might manage to do it at 
last?” 

If she tried her hardest — if she made up her mind to 
do a little more than her best. But what is your am- 
bition?” 

To write my name as a famous woman in a biography 
before I die, and to help father.” 

“ So vanity comes first with you, child,” he said, “ and 
duty after. And it will be by a great book, I suppose, that 
you will leave your ‘ footprints on the sands of time ’?” 

“I shall try,” said Audrey, humbly, ‘‘but there is 
something liere^^ (she put one hand upon her childish 
breast) “ that aches, and burns, and tortures me, and I 
must go and write down what is in my mind, and then it is 
all .miserable — it is not what I have been thinking, only 
when I get out of doors again ” (she stretched her, arms as if 
she would clasp the sky and world in her embrace) “ I see 
it all again quite clearly, but I don’t go back and try and 
write — again.” 

The note of sadness, almost of predestined doom in the 
young voice, smote strangely upon Mr. Newdegate’s ear, 
and he looked at her, as if searching for some of those 


52 THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 

signs of physical decay usually associated with abnormally 
developed intellectual power. 

But .the freckled face, if j^ale, was healthy; the gray- 
green eyes were brilliant with fire and health. Whatever 
springs of imagination and fervid thought rose in her had 
no origin in that pestilential breathing swamp, disease. 

Child, he said, ‘Mf you are determined to be great 
(though you would have done better for yourself if you had 
resolved merely to be happy), you must train yourself to 
that end. You must study acutely, incessantly, first nat- 
ure, then human nature, then books; above all you must 
learn utter unselfishness, and then some day the power will 
come to you to take pen in hand and write in words that 
all men will understand and echo in their hearts, for they 
will be true. Ten years hence, little maid, if both of us 
be alive, bring me sometliing that you have written, some- 
thing that has no Edward or Clorinda in it. 

Audrey sat still as a statue, every word sinking into her 
soul. Years afterward she could have repeated them. 
She took Mr. Newdegate’s hand and kissed it. 

“I wonT forget, she said, ‘‘and I am soriy I was 
rude to you just now. You^^e told me how I must learn to 
write, now couldn’t you tell me how to be good?” 

“ Are you so bad?” he said, holding her little hand and 
wishing that Bet had something of the same expression in 
her eyes as this child had. 

“ Veiy. And I often wish that I were dead, though I 
often tell the other ones I wish that they were.” 

“ What do they do to you?” 

‘ ‘ Laugh at me for my ugliness. ” 

“ Does Bet laugh?” 

“I’m a mean sneak to be telling tales,” cried Audrey, 
coloring violently, “ and it is all my own fault, every 
bit.” 

“ What is your own fault?” said Bet, as she advanced 
her dehcate head a little round a bush, and feeling a little 


THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 


53 


staggered that Mr. Newdegate should prefer Audrey^^ 
company to her own. 

“ That I have let her in for a lecture/^ said Mr. Newde- 
gate, ‘‘ though, by the way, I think her sisters are to blame 
for that by falling asleep. 

Did you find us so?” cried Bet, reddening. ‘‘ And 
pray why did you not awake us?^^ 

“You looked too happy,^^ said Mr. Newdegate. 

“ The fact is Audrey read us to sleep,” said Bet, puzzled 
by something in his eye. Could she have had her mouth 
wide open, and had she disenchanted him? 

“ Would it not have been kinder if you had contrived to 
keep awake?” he said in a low voice that was unnecessary, 
as Audrey had already conveyed herself out of sight. 

Bet hung her head and thought of Hammett. He never 
scolded her; and then she looked up with an audacious 
smile on her lips, and Mr. Newdegate thought that all the 
splendor and color of the June day seemed to have got into 
her eyes and cheeks and hair. 

“ Pray, sir,” she said, “ are you my master?” 

“ No,” he said, “ but I mean to be. ” 

“ How d^ye do?” said an elaborately polite voice at her 
elbow, and Bet turned with a start to see Hugh Garvock in 
Sunday panoply of frock-coat and tile, and a stilBly extended 
hand meant to imply the ordinary intimacy between a young 
woman and a yomig man who had merely dropped in for a 
morning call. 

“ How do you do?” said Bet in the same tone, “ and 
whereas Jem?” 

“ Gone to Cecily,” said Hugh, and then Bet introduced 
the two, and together they strolled toward the house. 

“ I saw yon in church,” said Hugh, by way of an original 
remark. 

“ And I you. That tall stool with you at the top of it 
look's grotesque,” said Bet, who was angry with him for 


54 


THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 


spoiling a tete-a-tete that promised to be as sjDirited as un- 
common. 

Well, you won^t see me there much longer/^ said 
Hugh, who had got on his very most ‘‘ swagger walk, 

for I got my commission this morning. 

Bet stopped short, and turned a little pale. Had she 
not for three long years promised him that when he had got 
it she would seriously “ think about being engaged to 
him? 

‘‘I congratulate you, Hugh/^ she said, but her voice 
trembled, and she did not look at him in. the face. 

‘‘ And if you^ll remember, Bet,^^ he said, and his voice 
was steady, ‘‘ there^s an agreement between you and me 
about this same commission, so I thought Yd come over 
this afternoon, and we^d settle it.^'’ 

Bet^s white sunshade now obscured her countenance 
from both men^s eyes, and if she spoke no sound was 
audible. 

‘‘I think I see your father at the window, said Mr. 
Newdegate, and the next moment the 3’oung pair were 
alone. 

‘‘ Bet,^^ said the young man, “ do you mean to marry 
me. Of are you going to throw me over?^^ 

‘‘ How can you marry?’' said Bet, standing still in the 
midst of the wide lawn, and looking up at him with less 
anger if but little more love than a few minutes ago. 

“Oh, Bet,” he cried suddenly, “how lovely you are!” 
and indeed he had never realized her beauty so vividly as 
now when he stood in danger of losing it. 

“ But how can you marry?” she repeated impatiently. 
“It will be years and years before you are able, and by that 
time little Patty, who is the image of me, will be grown 
up.” 

“ Then you are going to jilt me?” he said, and his brown 
cheek grew pale, and his eyes hard. 

“ Not at all! I only decline to wait for you till my 


THE FASHIOH OF THIS WORLD. 


55 


cheeks are as yellow as sunflowers, and I have taken to 
caps to hide my baldness. 

‘‘ I see your game/^ he said, with the roughness of youth 
and pain. ‘‘ You think Newdegate a better match, and if 
I were in a position to marry you to-morrow, your answer 
^to me would be the same.^^ 

Yes,^^ she said, very pale; “ it would be the same.^^ 
Then, by God, I wish that fellow joy of you,^^ he said, 
and turned violently on his heel and left her, his handsome 
young face distorted with humiliation and anger; and her 
heart sunk as he passed away out of sight and she thought 
of Hammett. 


CHAPTER X. 

“ And oft she sighed and looked around 
As though the silence scorning; 

It was time for the mower to whet his scythe 
At five o’clock in the morning.” 

Thus sung Bet, but there was the whish-whish of twice 
twenty mowers in her ears as she leaned her arms on the 
gate of the big meadow and kept her ears in the back of 
her head for approaching footsteps. 

Six oYlock had just struck from the old Abbey Church. 
How mellow and sweet the notes sounded, floating over the 
quiet town, and bringing with them, for mere old associa- 
tions’ sake, a feeling of peace to the girl who listened! 
Dear and familiar were those lines of the landscape on 
which her eyes rested, and that she had sometimes chafed 
at as monotonous, longing to get out into the world that 
lay beyond them and into which she would long ago have 
thrust Hugh head foremost had she possessed the power. 
And now he was going, going that very day, and did not 
instinct surely whisper her that she was going, too, but not 
with him? 


56 


THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 


She would like him to take away a charming memory of 
her, so that, no matter whom he might fall in love with 
afterward, there should be one niche in his heart that she 
should always fill. And so she had sent him a message 
that she would be in the orchard at six o^clock to wish him 
good-bye, and this she thought a great concession on her 
part since he had eschewed the house for a week, and only 
come to it when he knew that she was riding with her 
father and Mr. Newdegate, when he had wished everybody 
farewell from Mrs. Bonnor downward to the cook. 

Did she mean to comfort him with the green apples that 
nodded above her head, or console him with some false 
promise that both he and she would know must be broken? 
And yet she felt that she could have made him such a 
promise had he learned the way to move hen as Hammett 
had almost the power to do, and a sudden rush of tender 
feeling toward the comrade of her youth brought to her eyes 
tears that might have melted away the hardness of his own 
had he but been beside her to see them. 

But surely he was in no hurry this morning she thought, 
as the quarter chimed and still his swift steps did not pass 
beneath the trees, and gradually the conviction came home 
to Miss Betty^s mind that young men’s hearts were not 
balls, to be tossed hither and thither at will, and that a 
flirt may now and then have a sharp lesson that will make 
her look very like a fool. 

She certainly felt one when at half past six she turned 
her back on the mowers, who were already thinking of 
breakfast, and there was a proud color in her cheek, and an 
angry sparkle in her eye that boded ill for Master Hugh 
should he, even thus late in the day, enter an appearance. 
But Hugh had no such intention. From the church and 
tower, a convenient eyrie that commanded the whole town, 
he had seen the blue cotton gown wend its way round Tom 
Bonnor’s garden and descend to the orchard, thence to the 
gate, where it waited with confident expectation in its every 


THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 


57 


line. Then he laughed unfeelingly, for his heart and tem- 
per alike were both bitter just then, but he stopped laugh- 
ing when she turned sharp round and moved toward the 
house, and he saw that a man^s figure was approaching her 
from the opposite direction. It was not Hammett, so it 
must be Mr. Hewdegate. 

And pray what did Mr. Newdegate want up so early, 
and how came a man of such fine tact obtruding himself on 
a scene obviously prepared for another figure than his in 
the foreground? 

Hugh saw Bet start, then slacken her pace, and for a 
moment he thought himself a fool not to have been the one 
to meet her, to take a few bitter-sweet words, perhaps a 
kiss or two, then part with some of his new-born hatred for 
her washed away. 

Mr. Newdegate raised his hat. Bet bowed her head, 
neither put out a hand, and both stood looking at one 
another. 

I am out early, she said, because I had asked Hugh 
Garvock to come here and wish me good-bye.^’ 

‘‘ And no doubt you have sent him away happy, said 
Mr. Newdegate. 

‘‘On the contrary, she said; “ he did not come.^^ 

“ And you are not broken-hearted?’^ he said gravely. 

You are only angry that he declines to be made a fool of 
again.” 

“ Are any young men wise?” said Bet, a faint smile 
tempering the vexation of her features. 

“ Are any middle-aged ones?” 

“ Hot when they get up at six o’clock in the morning.” 

“ But it is by just such an imprudence that they get the 
ad\'antage of boys. ” 

“Oh! poor Hugh!” she exclaimed, as one thinking 
aloud, and with tears springing to her eyes. “We have 
been such friends always, and so constantly together; and 


58 THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 

now he is going away, and he will not even wish me good- 
bye."" 

“ Could you give him such a good-bye as would content 
him?"" said Mr. Newdegate, rather sternly. 

They had turned back to the gate now, and Bet was in 
her former attitude of gazing out at the field, and perhaps 
she did not hear, or choose to hear him. 

‘^And ther^ is Hammett Yorke,"" he went on; “you 
have got to get rid of him, too, before you are at liberty, as 
an honest woman, to accept an honest man"s love. " " 

“ I don"t wish to be at liberty,"" she said, hashing round, 
“ and the honest man may keep his love for a more honest 
woman, when he can find her. "" 

“ That would be difficult,"" he said; “ and if you are a 
flirt. Bet, I think you would know how to treat a husband 
better than a lover. "" 

“ Oouldn"t a man combine the two qualities?"" said Bet, 
in a mischievous voice. 

“ I mean to try,"" he said, “ but my wife must be no 
flirt, and if she dances at home she must walk sedately 
abroad. And she must love her husband, and read the 
marriage service carefully before she binds herself by its 
conditions. "" 

“ She will be an unusual young woman if she does,"" said 
Bet, resting her chin in the hollow of one pink palm; “ but 
I"ve no doubt that if you advertised in the ‘ Matrimonial 
News " you would get suited directly. "" 

“ I"m suited already. Bet,"" he said, “and you know 
it."" 

“ r)oesn"t it take two to make a bargain?"" said Bet, 
turning a saucy, laughing face over her shoulder, where- 
upon, without more ado, Mr. Newdegate kissed her. 

“ Oh!"" sighed rather than cried out Bet, and then her 
face flamed, just as if she knew that Hugh was looking at 
her as well as Mr. Newdegate, and she turned her back to 


THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 


59 


the gate and walked away, but first she slapped his face 
soundly. 

‘‘ You must be- very fond of me, Bet, to do that,^^ he said 
as he moved beside her, “ and I feel very much flattered; 
but there ^s a penalty attached to a slap, and you must pay 
it. 

‘‘ I will pay it, sir,^^ she said with spirit, when I love 
you, and not before. 

“ And when will that be?^^ 

“ Perhaps when I have found out some of your good 
qualities, and all your bad. 

‘‘ And have you learned nothing of my character yet?^' 
he said, feeling a little chilled, “and I have lived in the 
same house with you for a week, and I think I know yourS 
thoroughly. 

“ Yes,^^ said Bet, “ you see me here,^^ — she half stretched 
out her arms toward the fair, and, to her, familiar surround- 
ings — “ at home, having never traveled more than twenty 
miles from it in my life, and you see just how I live, how I 
always have lived. You even know all about my stupid 
little love affairs, and my history is before you like an open 
page. But your What do I know of you? No doubt you 
are on your best behavior, and you think it is about time 
you had a wife, and that the daughter of your old friend 
will suit you, and so you drop your pocket-handkerchief, 
and — I won^t pick it up!^^ 

“ And you won^t marry me, Bet?” 

“ No!” 

“ And I say you shall. 

Bet laughed. 

“ I thought it would be so easy,” she said, “ just to put 
my hand in the hand of some man who loved me, and go 
away with him, but I know now that I would not do it for 
Hugh, that I could not do it for Hammett, and that I will 
not do it for you!^^ 

“Some day,” he said, “ perhajis sooner than you sup- 


60 


THE FASHION OF THIS WOKLD. 


pose, the power will come to you, and I shall take you 
away. 

But in his heart he felt that something was lacking, and 
his mind glanced to Audrey. Yet her sister would have 
been miserable with half her brains, and, after all, was not 
this wholesome, handsome, good-humored, honest girl good 
enough for his or any other man^s wife? 

As if his thought of Audrey had summoned her to the 
scene, she appeared at this moment from behind a tree, 
looking pale and anxious and with the inevitable three- 
cornered hillet half concealed in her hand. 

‘‘ From Hugh/^ exclaimed Bet, stepping forward. 

Audrey shook her head and vanished. 

Bet slowly unfolded the twisted note and read it. She 
turned a little pale, then sighed, and looked at her self- 
constituted master. 

Do you like nightingales?^^ she said. “ Yes? Then I 
can promise you a treat. At teno^clock to-night, precisely, 
you shall hear one!^^ 


CHAPTER XL 

“ Sing ower again that sang, Nannie, 

The sang ye sang just noo.” 

‘ ‘ I never sang a sang i’ my life 
But I wad sing owre to you.” 

Cecily had just brought in her father’s tobacco-jar as 
usual, and had stoppered his pipe with her slender finger as 
she filled it, but she held no match to light it, for Tom 
Bonnor was playing whist. 

Mrs. Bonnor was pla3dng too — that is to say, she was lay- 
ing down aces, kmgs, and queens with her usual profusion: 
she was also gently revoking now and then, and made a 
point of never returning her partner’s lead. 

‘‘ Now look, mother!” cried Cecily, thinking she saw a 


THE FASHIOH OF THIS WORLD. 61 

shade on that partner '’s brow; didn^t you see? Mr. 
Newdegate played a spade to the first round of hearts — and 
it^s your lead!^'’ 

AVhereupon, portentously, and having previously fingered 
every other card in her hand, Mrs. Bonnor led a spade. 

In the burst of laughter (mildly resented by Mrs. Bonnor) 
that followed, was heard, from the garden without, a night- 
ingale singing. 

‘‘ Well,^'* said Tom Bonnor, ‘‘ I had no idea we had any 
nightingales about here just now; and how uncommonly 
well this one sings 

“ So well,^'’ said Mr. Newdegate, glancing at the clock, 

that really his voice is quite — human.^^ 

‘‘ Yes,^^ said Bet, so human that I mean to hear if it 
is as sweet at close quarters as at a distance. Will you come 
too, Mr. Newdegate? she added as the game came to an 
end. 

‘‘I thank you; no,-’^ said Mr. Newdegate, while Mrs. 
Bonnor looked at her daughter in amazement, and won- 
dered how on earth she had become the mother of such a 
heartless flirt. And when Bet disappeared, and almost im- 
mediately the suspicious song ceased, she knew as well as 
everybody present, except Tom, that Bet was behind the 
copper-beech, talking to a nightingale. Often had Ham- 
mett beckoned her out by this nice little mechanical con- 
trivance that, placed in water, simulated so well the jug- 
jug, the sob, the passion of the brown bird; and to-night 
something of the wild entreaty and longing in his own soul 
made the simulated cries more pathetic. Yet when he 
knew that Bet approached, he dashed the toy underfoot, 
some instinct telling liim he would never use it again. 

With anguish in the eyes she could not see, he was hold- 
ing both her hands, and imploring her with such passion as 
only a quite young and very ardent lover can feel, to tell 
him that she loved him, that she would wait a little while 


C2 THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 

for him, and not throw herself away on this new old man 
who might have been her father. 

‘‘ He is not quite forty years old/^ said Bet. 

He looks a hundred/^ cried poor Hammett savagely, 

and he ought to know better at his time of life than to 
come stealing other people's sweethearts away. " 

‘‘ But I never promised to be your sweetheart," said Bet. 

But you let me love you — ^you knew that I was the only 
one in real earnest out of all in the lot, that every ambition, 
every hope I had in life was centered in you, and you might 
have stopped me. Bet, before this, if you had meant to 
throw it all away. " 

I promised you nothing," said Bet again. ‘‘We have 
all been boys and girls together, playing at love, and it 
must have come to an end some time or other. " 

“ It was deadly earnest with me," said Hammett bitterly, 
“ and you knew it. Not a week ago you listened to me, 
you let me kiss you, and you may well blush for it now. 
You kissed me once, too. I was not afraid of that fellow 
Garvock, and I know of no one else. Yet in one short 
week you make up your mind to jilt me, and you don't care 
a bit." 

“ But I do," said Bet, moved more by his voice and its 
dogged misery than by his woixis, “ and if you had been 
older, Hammett, and things had been different — " 

“ You mean if I were not in trade," he said; “ but I tell 
you this. Bet, that much as I love you, I would not have 
married any woman who was ashamed of the way I earned 
my bread." 

“ Which I should have been," said Bet briskly; “ so, af- 
ter all, you see it was quite an impossible idea that we should 
marry. I have no doubt that when you are old enough 
you will meet a most respectable young woman, who in be- 
coming your last love will make you quite forget you had a 
first." 

“ Yes," said Hammett between his teeth. “ I ivill for- 


THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 63 

get you. A man was made for something better than to be 
the sport of a vain flirt. It was because I thought you 
something different that I swallowed my pride, and came 
sneaking about the place like a thief, that I sponged on 
your father^ s hospitality behind his back, and degraded my- 
self to the level of a visitor who sneaks in by the back 
stairs, because he knows that if caught he will be kicked 
out by the Iront. But I thought that once I had got your 
promise I could have persuaded Mr. Bonnor — 

“ No,^^ said Bet, you would never have persuaded 
father. 

But in time I should have persuaded you/^ said Ham- 
mett. You were just beginning to love me when that 
fellow came, and Ik’s my belief that you love me now, for 
you canH have fallen in loye with him in a week.^^ 

There is such a thing as love at, first sight, said Bet 
gravely. 

Hammett laughed as loud and long as he dared. 

‘‘Are you going to pose as Juliet?’^ he said. “ Well, 
your Romeo has this advantage, that he must have played 
the part to hundreds of other Juliets. 

“ Then of course he should assume the role admirably, 
said Bet, “ and he will have no provincial airs and graces. 

“ No; I donH see any graces in him at all,^^ said Ham- 
mett savagely. “ He keeps them in his money-bags, I 
dare say. 

“ Yes, I believe he is rich,'’’ said Bet frankly. 

“ And so he is able to buy you,” said Hammett in a tone 
of intense bitterness, “ and he will know it, and he will 
never love you as I would have done.” 

“ Oh, yes he will,” said Bet. “ Men are all very much 
alike when they fall in love — and boys too. ” 

“lam not a boy,” he said. “ I have a man’s heart, and 
though you have tried to break it, you shall not; and if 
you will not promise to-night to marry me, I will go away 
until I have forgotten you.” 


64 THE FASHION" OF THIS WORLD. 

“ Oil, don^t go away!^^ said Bet, in tones of real dismay; 
just think of my coming down from three admirers to 
only one.^* 

“You shallow heart he cried, and longed to shake 
her, hut most of all he longed to take her in his arms and 
carry her away agamst her will, and by mere force of love 
subdue and master her. 

“ Do you want to be caught by father?^ ^ she said, trying 
to free her wrists from the grip of iron in wliich he held 
them. “ He may be strolling down here at any moment. 

“ I shouldn't mind his catching me,^^ said Hammett 
slowly; “ in fact IVe a great mind to lead you up to that 
window now, this minute, and say, ‘ Here is a heartless 
jilt, sir, that you may blush to own as daughter. ^ ” 

“ Thank you,^^ said Bet, “ but I can do all the blushing 
that is required on my account myself. And 1^11 tell father 
about you when — when — she paused, and he said: 

“ When you accept Mr. Newdegate.^^ 

“ Why should I accept him?’^ cried Bet, stamping her 
foot; “ Avhy should I make up my mind to marry anybody 
for the present? I should like not to hear another word 
about love for a whole year!’^ 

“ Will you promise that?’^ cried Hammett eagerly, 
‘‘ that you will not listen to a wor^ from him, or me, or 
anybody for a year? If so, 1^11 stay at home.^^ 

Bet shuddered at the prospect she had a moment before 
desired. 

“1^11 promise nothing, she said, “and now good- 
night, Hammett — or, is it good-bye ?^^ 

“It is good-bye, said Hammett, wrestling with the 
mad desire that rose in him to snatch and kiss her, or even 
hurt this soft, selfish creature with the violence of his love, 
but suddenly he threw her hands apart and thrust her from 
him, vanishing from her side like a shadow that fades upon 
deeper blackness. 

“ Hammett she called gently through the darkness, 


THE PASHIOK OF THIS WORLD. 


65 . 

but there came no answer back, and a little chill crept over 
her heart as she realized that in one day she had lost two 
hearts that for many a long year had kept their faithfullest 
and truest beats for her. 


CHAPTER XII. 

I will not wear the short claithing, 

But I will wear the syde; 

I will not walk to my widding, 

But I to it will ride.” 

Talk about the ten little niggers, said Kenneth in a 
tone of disgust, why, they were ^johe to us. They went 
off singly; we are being swept off by twos and fours and 
sixes. ” 

Hugh first, said Cecily in a lugubrious tone, then 
Hammett — 

His stool is empty, said Kenneth in a voice of mock 
misery: 

** ‘ His hound is to the hunting gone, 

His hawk to fetch the wild fowl home, 

His lady’s away with another mate,’ 

though, unlike the knight, perhaps he means to come back 
some day. 

And now Stephen has got some introduction from Mr. 
Kewdegate to people in Tasmania,-’ ^ continued Cecily in 
her dolorous voice, and he is not only going, but he is 
persuading Jem to go too!’^ 

And will that break your heart, miss?’^ said Kenneth, 
looking at her sharply. 

Ko, but I shall miss liim dreadfully. And it’s all very 
well for Bet, who has got another lover to ref^lace those 
who are going away — but I’ve got nobody!” 

There’s Otho Yorke,” said Kenneth; but I forgot 
he’s forbidden the house. Just fancy his old dad firing up 


66 


THE FASHIOK OF THIS WORLD. 


like that because Hammett went away, and writing to 
father that he ought to be ashamed to own such a jade as 
Bet for a daughter. 

‘‘ Bet deserved all she got,^^ said Cecily, who perhaps 
felt her prospective poverty of beaus the more acutely for 
her sister certainties, but poor mother had a bad quar- 
ter of an hour with father, and I don^t think he will ever 
trust any of us again. And when Bet’s gone, existence 
here will be a lively thing. ” 

Is she going?” said Kenneth dryly. 

Yes. All this fuss about Hammett has decided her. 
If she must be a jade, she thinks she will be a married 
one.” 

‘‘ And I can’t be a bride-maid,” said Audrey, from the 
corner of the room in which she was writing, for I’m 
going to be sent to school. ” 

“ Is that what you’ve been crying for these two days?” 
said Cecily, turning round to look at the deplorable coun- 
tenance of her younger sister. 

Yes — about that — and Hammett.” 

What is that white stuff on your face?” 

‘‘ Chalk. I rubbed it on just to see if anybody would 
notice that I was pale. But nobody has looked at me to- 
day but you. ” 

The door opened, and Bet came quietly in. She had 
sobered greatly during the past few days, and was, as Ken- 
neth expressed it, settling down to Mr. NCwdegate with as 
little loss of time as possible. 

‘‘ Are we to congratulate you?” said her young brother, 
as she came to the window and sat down. 

Audrey held her breath. Up to now she had clung to 
the hope that Bet would turn her back on the middle-aged 
lover, and recall Hammett. 

“ Mind your own business,” said Bet, “ and stick to your 
school lessons. Why did you not come to wish him good- 
bye?” she added, turning to Cecily. 


THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 


67 


* He is not gone, my dear old Jem?^’ cried Cecily, start- 
ing up. 

“ Jem, no! It is Mr. Newdegate wlio is gone.” 

Wliew!'^ whistled Kenneth, ‘‘ so now all our lovers are 
gone! But cheer up, there are plenty more in the neigh- 
borhood.^^ 

Rex is going to AVoolwich,” cried Hazel, rushing into 
the room, “ he has just been here to tell me. ” 

And Roy,” cried Meg, who came tripping up to her 
sister’s heels, has made up his mind to the Church, and 
he is going to Oxford next term. ’ ’ 

And even Jack Garvock is forbidden the house,” said 
Kenneth, “ so may the Lord have mercy on you poor for- 
lorn spins.” 

It is a spell that’s o’er us cast,” said Cecily, making a 
misquotation. ‘‘ Who would suppose that only a fortnight 
ago we were all dancing together without a thought of 
separation? And now, as if by the stroke of a wizard’s 
wand, all our young men vanish and everything is changed. 
And I think the wizard is Mr. Kewdegate. ” 

It was true. He had come like an enchanter into their 
midst, and those circling shapes of youth and beauty, those 
dancing youths and maidens had receded, as it were, at his 
approach, and dwindled gradually into mist. 

Poor wizard!” said Bet with a sigh; why do you not 
tell him so, Ces, and ask him to restore us to our former 
state of happiness and innocence?” 

How can I tell him when he has gone?” said Cecily, 
opening her eyes. 

Oh! you will have plenty of opportmiities for telling 
him — he is coming back the day after to-morrow. ’ ’ 


68 


THE FASHIOH OF THIS WORLD* 


CHAPTER XIIL 

“ To ride, to run, to rant, to roar. 

To always spend and never spare, 

I wot an’ he were the king himself. 

Of gold and fee he mot he hare.” 

Tom Boknor sat in the pleasant room he called his 
study, a sheet of paper covered with figures before him. 
The room looked out on the corner of the garden next the 
conservatory, the angle being filled in by a blaze of fiowers, 
whose color he seemed to try and shut out as he pressed his 
eyeballs down with one hand. 

Every sign of masculine occupation was present, the only 
token of a feminine presence being a low light chair, on 
which reposed a ball of wool, with a chikPs half-knitted 
sock beside it; and trophies of Tom^s prowess at every sport 
lined the walls, while pictures of his favorite dogs and 
horses interspersed them. A portrait of his wife was over 
the mantel-piece, photographs of his children were nailed 
up in their frames here and there, his pipe-rack overflowed 
with the worn-out old friends that had furnished him so 
many grateful hours in the room that he had occupied now 
close on twenty-two years. 

How light had been the heart he had brought hither, 
how content it had been for many succeeding years. He 
would have found it difficult to- say when the first shadow 
fell across it — a shadow thrown by none of his household 
nor indeed by any known hand, but a shadow that made 
him shrink from opening his bank-book, and going into his 
accounts; a shadow that grew longer as the neglected ac- 
counts were never righted, and in their stead he was forced 
to read more legal missives in a week than he had formerly 
received in half a life-time. 

But once over the threshold the shadow seldom crossed it 


THE FASHIOK OF THIS WORLD. 69 

behind him, and it was not often that dull care got up and 
rode behind him to covert, or kept step with him to spoil 
his enjoyment when in the clear September mornings he 
went forth to the sport that he loved. If conscience some- 
times smote bim, and bade him sell his hunters, let his 
costly preserves, cut down his establishment by one half, 
and bring his sons up without loss of time to earn their own 
living, he would thrust the prompting aside and say to him- 
self, ‘‘ There is no hurry, next year will do, and things are 
not desperate yet/’ and so another year would be wasted, 
and more debts accumulated, though in the neighborhood 
Tom Bonnor was known only as a prosperous man, and no 
scandal had yet touched his name. 

Usually when once those hateful business letters were 
answered (and at what cost!) he put thought aside, but this 
morning, vexed with his wife, angry with his daughters, 
and stung perhaps by the recent insolence of Mr. Yorkers 
letter, and in some odd way feeling forced to view his own 
situation from what would be Mr. Yorkers point of view, 
he had taken pen and ink, and written down in two col- 
umns his expenditui’e and his income, his debts and the 
money owed to him, and having looked at the two totals he 
had covered his eyes with his hands as if to shut them out. 

It was not too late now; by giving up this house and 
living quietly abroad, or in some place where they were un- 
known, enough might be saved out of the wreck to provide 
for them all, and by degrees the load of debt could be 
cleared off and he would be a free man again. Ay, but to 
find the courage that but one man in a hmidred finds, and 
so is ruined in the end by his cowardice; the hardness that 
should enable him to say to his wife and daughters, “ This 
home is no longer yours — by my folly and bad management 
I have driven you from it, and with lowered crests you must 
seek some strange abode in which you will never for one 
moment be able to forget that my hand has planted you 
there.^" 


70 


THE FASHIOH OF THIS WORLD. 


He rose from liis chair, and began to 23ace the room. 
Jsol he could not do it. He still had resources upon which 
he coidd borrow money, and here he drew a deep breath 
and looked quickly round, as if he feared his thoughts had 
uttered themselves aloud; then he walked to the cupboard 
that held his tobacco and cigars, and measuring himself out 
a glass of cheriy brandy, drank it off, then returned to the 
table. 

A gentle knock came to the door, and he said, ‘ ‘ Come 
in,'’^ wondering who it could be, for only his wife ever came 
there, and without a knock. It was Bet, who came in 
slowly, and looking pale, for she had not seen her father 
since the day before, when he had gone to her with Mr. 
Yorkers letter in his hand, and on asking her if the man 
had license to write as he did. Bet had simply said: 

He has reason to be angry. I behaved very badly to 
his son. 

He had then felt for the first time the corroding bitter- 
ness caused by a disobedient or deceitful child, and his 
anger against her to-day was hot as then, so that she 
quailed before his blue eyes as he said: 

I am busy, girl. AVhat do you want with me?^^ 

Yet roughly as he spoke he was thinking of how she 
would look with this dainty dress stripjied off her, together 
with that insouciant air of untroubled youth and freshness. 

Father, she said, I wish to be married. Have you 
any objection.^^^ 

Married echoed Tom, forgetting everything but his 
deadly hatred of jiossible husbands for his daughters, a 
chit like you get married ? Come to me in five or ten 
years'’ time, and perhaps ITl listen to you.’^ 

“ But I am nearly twenty, father, said Bet, firmly, 
and there are three other girls at home all grown up, and 
one must make a beginning somewhere.'’^ 

And pray,^^ said Tom, surveying her sarcastically, 
who is the young man — the boy, I siqipose I should call 


THE FASHION- OF THIS WORLD. 71 

him? Is it Yorkers son, whom he occupies as clerk, or 
Garvock's boy, who is learning to be a soldier?^ ^ 

It is neither, sir,^'’ said Bet, gravely. 

“ Upon my word!^^ said Tom, walking impatiently to 
and fro, ‘ ‘ the deceit of you girls passes everytliing. Here, 
for years, you have been looking as innocent as a baby, and 
behind my back flirting with all the rag-tag and bobtail — 

‘‘ No, sir,^^ cried Bet, indignantly, both Hammett and 
Hugh are as good as us Bonnors, and perhaps better.'’^ 

Tom stopped in his walk and looked at his daughter* 
Yes! they were better than he, certainly; for at least they 
were honest, and their fathers were honest men also. 

Bet saw the shade on his face, and approaching him, she 
ventured to take his hand and say : 

‘‘ Forgive me, dear father, for the deception I, as well 
as the rest, have practiced toward you. But it began so 
early, when the Yorkes were mere children like ourselves, 
and they had no mother, and would come straying in 
through the fences, for they live so near; and when we 
grew up every year made it more difficult to tell you, be- 
cause we knew how you disliked their father, and they 
knew it, too.^^ 

“ But you could have been friendly without encouraging 
them as lovers, said Tom. “ Why, bless my soul, when 
I was yomig I could talk to a pretty girl without wanting 
to marry her. 

'‘But I^m afraid, said Bet, inaudibly, “I was not a 
girl but ^/le girl to Hammett. 

“Eh? Well, I should like to know what fresh tomfool- 
ery you have been up to in the way of lovers. Has one of 
those counter-skippers who stare at you in church had the 
impertinence to write to you?^^ 

“ No,^^ said Bet, “ I have not heard from one of them 
since you answered Mr. Kilmarnock^ s proposal by saying 
you concluded it was intended for your house-maid — not 
your daughter 


72 


THE FASHION OF THIS EVOKED. 


“ And I dare say I shall have to answer more than one 
impudent fellow in the same way/^ said Tom; and pray 
wdiat is the name of the new one?^^ 

“ Ralph Newdegate/^ 

Tom looked at his daughter as if she. were mad or dream- 
ing. 

Newdegate?’^ he said, my old friend N’ewdegate 
wdshes to marry your^^ 

‘‘Yes/’ said Bet, “ and I wish to many him.” 

Tom Bonnor turned his hack on his daughter with an 
odd feeling of rei^ugnance to both her and Ms friend. He 
was on the point of bursting out with passionate words that 
forbade the union, when his eyes fell on the sheet of paper, 
covered with calculations, that lay on the* table. What 
right had he to hold her back from a rich woman’s life, to 
make her share one that would be torture to a girl so gently 
bred r 

But his face was pale, and his voice hoarse as he said: 

“You have made your choice. Bet, and I will not oppose 
it ” — then signed to her to leave him, and bent Mmself 
once more to grapple with the question between right and 
wrong, to face his world and future like an honest man, or 
to erect new and tottering bulwarks against the floods that 
he knew must sooner or later undermine them. 


CHAPTER XIV. 

“ Thy girdle of gold so red, 

With pearls bedecked sumptuously, 

The like no other lasses had.” 

Bet had become accustomed to the consideration and 
respect to which, as the betrothed bride of so rich a man as 
Mr. Xewdegate, she was entitled. I suppose that the; pos- 
.session of large means gives a sense of power and ease to a 
man, if in some it may deteriorate into a paltry pride, for 


THE FASHIOX OF THIS WOKLD. 7-S 

is there not a species of arrogance, and a glorification of 
self in seeing your wife better dressed, better turned out at 
all points than the wives of your friends, just as there is a 
vulgarity in wishing to give a better dinner than your neigh- 
bor is able to give you? 

No sign of Mr. Newdegate^’s appreciation of his wealth 
ever escaped him, but Bet soon found that it made delightful- 
ly smooth and easy those approaches to the altar that pov- 
erty and love combined, often find so rough and thorny. 
If he were a wizard, as Cecily had said, then he had a fairy 
godmother^s gift as well of scattering precious stones upon 
the path that Bet trod, and Titania herself might have 
shrouded herself in the cobweb laces that skillful fingers 
soon draped around the erect, vigorous shape that Mr. 
Newdegate had delighted to honor. He had begged Mrs. 
Bonnor to be very sparing of silks and satins, and give her 
daughter only those simple, delicate robes in one of which 
she had caught his fancy, and if Bet at first rebelled, she 
soon discovered that no better foil than such simplicity 
could be found to those strings of light and beauty that 
from time to time her lover clasped about her neck and 
arms. 

For the rest, Mrs. Bonnor set with the same steadiness^ 
about Bet^s linen as if her daughter were going to, marry a 
man with a hundred instead of ten thousand a year; in 
either case she would have ordered the same and she never 
thought of asking Tom Bonnor what he could, or could 
not, afford. 

Perhaps she was more interested in some other work she 
was abouk jusf then — the making a set of flannel shirts for 
Stephen, who would be leaving home before his sister’s 
wedding. I think that many a secret tear was sewn into 
the beautifid seams upon which she prided herself, and that 
thoughts of her eldest son, so young to go out into the 
world, filled her thoughts more than any visions of her 
daughter’s brilliant future. She wondered much that Tom 


74 


THE FASHIOH OF THIS WORLD. 


let the boy go so easily, his education uncompleted, a mere 
stripling to contend with a world of which he could know 
nothing; but when she spoke of this to her husband he put 
her by, and said there was always a home for Stephen to 
return to if he could not make his way abroad. Stephen 
himself was happy, looking out with earnest eyes at the life 
before him, rejoicing to shake off the sloth-like existence he 
was leading, and cheered by the thought of Jem^s company, 
for Jem, in spite of his stutter, was excellent company, and 
so faithfully and besottedly in love vdth Stephen’s sister 
that liis patience was likely to be inexliaustible with a com- 
rade considerably his junior. I think that Cecily gave few 
regrets about this time to the banished Otho Yorke, and 
that she never had a worse heartache in her life than when, 
with tears streaming down his honest red face, and wetting 
her owm, Jem kissed her, and implored her to be faitliful 
to him, for he would be back in less than two years. . . . 
Alas! poor Jem, thy coming home was not to be here, and 
Cecily’s bright eyes will weep no such bitter tears for thee 
in the hereafter as beneath thy living eyes they are weej)- 
ing now. . . . 

Stephen’s farewells were quickly made, and gave him no 
2 )ain mitil he came to Audrey, last of all, save liis mother. 

‘‘ God bless you, Audrey,” he said, take care of 
mother, ” 23erha2)S thinking less of the slenderness of the 
oliild’s arm, than the indomitable courage and spirit that 
looked out of her eyes, and Audrey held her tears back, and 
said, ‘‘I will,” and only clmig a little longer roimd his 
neck than did her sisters in their loud-voiced laments. 

‘‘Send home if you w^ant money, my boy,” said Tom 
Bonnor, “ and come back if you don’t like it,” and Stephen 
said, “ I thank you, sir,” inwardly vowing that he would 
do neither the one nor the other. 

If after the two “ boys ’’had gone Mrs. Bonnor sat apart 
for a little time each day, while Audrey cried herself into a 
fit of weakness that made her more irritable and naughty 


THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 


75 


than ever, the rest of the family took their departure easily 
enough, and even Cecily dried her eyes over her bride- 
maid^ s dress and the prospect of the “ best man,'’^ who was 
to accompany Mr. iN’ewdegate from town. 

For Mr. Newdegate, who had succeeded very well in Bet^s 
good graces, and even won from her so fair a simihtude of 
love that he was not sure but it might be love itself, had 
gone away for the fortnight immediately preceding the 
wedding, and would not return until the evening before the 
day appointed. 

And Tom Bonnor had become reconciled to the match. 
He shut his book of reckoning, and locked it away until 
after the wedding. ISTot that he wished to deceive his 
daughter^’s lover, for he had told him plainly Bet would not 
have a sixpence, but he could not bear Mr. Hewdegate or 
any other to know his position. Kor would he brook the 
humiliation of being offered the help that would save him. 

For Tom was one of those men who prefer to go to the 
money-lenders and borrow at ruinous interest to borrowing 
of a friend, or asking that friend to. be security for him. If 
he fell he fell with only his immediate family about him. 
His ruin would darken no man^s hearth, or sow bitterness 
in the soul of the man who trusted him. And I think he 
was right, and I respect the man who will take his great- 
coat to a pawnbroker rather than solicit alms of either re- 
lation or friend, and go without the savory meat that is 
coldly spread for him by the fingers of charity. 

About this time Tom thought a good deal of Mr. Yorke, 
of the man^s independent spirit and still more independent 
means, of his power to place his sons in fife as he willed, 
and of his perfect mastery over liis own life — a power that 
Tom had so completely sunk that he now was but a puppet 
in the hands of fate. 

As if Tomb’s thoughts had summoned him, Mr. Yorke 
one day imexpectedly favored him with an afternoon call, 
or, more correctly speaking, he favored Bet, who was 


76 


THE FASniOH OF THIS WORLD. 


caught unawares in the drawing-room to which he was 
shown. 

‘‘ So you are the young woman who has made a vaga- 
bond of my son?'^ he said, without prefix of any sort, as he 
stood and looked at her. 

What son? I know so many young men who are vaga- 
bonds,^'’ said Bet. 

I never had a son who was one till he had the mis- 
fortune to know you, ma’am,’^ said Mr. Yorke. 

“ I am not ma^am yet,^^ said Bet, sweetly. 

“ And the man^s a fool who gives you the title, said 
Mr. Yorke, grimly, his harsh voice and rugged physiognomy 
looking strangely out of iilacehn the room. 

Bet smiled. 

“ Perhaps you’re laughing at me, miss?” he said, dryly; 
and Bet said, No, she was only thinking of what a droll 
father-in-law he would have made.” 

His face changed suddenly from anger to the workings of 
a deep and uncontrollable agitation. 

‘‘ Girl!” he said, and at the passion in his deep voice she 
started, ‘‘you’ve plucked the heart out of the breast, the 
23urpose out of the life of my first-bom, my best beloved son, 
.and you’ve driven him out, God knows where, and I don’t 
know where; and when he is coming back perhaps God 
knows too, for I don’t. Perhaps he’s dead, and if so, I 
hope my curse will light upon your marriage, and you and 
yours forever!” 

“ He would not have wished that,” said Bet, below her 
breath, and pale as ashes. 

“ No,” said his father, still in that stern yet jiassionate 
way. “ He set you beyond everything, beyond his father, 
beyond his business, beyond everything upon earth. If he 
writes to any one, he will write to you; if he dies he will 
send a message to you. And if you receive such a letter or 
-such a message in the midst of your new-fangled pomp and 


THE FASHIOI^’ OF THIS TVOKLD. 


77 


splendor, I command you to send to me that I may know 
if my son be in the land of the dead or the living. 

Bet^s head had sunk on her breast, and tears were falling 
on the locked hands that bore more than one of Mr. Newde- 
gate^s gifts. 

Tom Bonnor, entering rather quickly, stopped short at 
sight of his daughter's abasement, and the figure of Nigel 
Yorke with one hand uplifted and pointed like a judgment 
at her shrinking shape. 

He frowned as he said, “ May I ask, sir, your business 
with me this afternoon 

‘‘ I want news of my son, sir, and I thought I might get 
it from your daughter. 

The two men faced each other with dislike written in 
every line of their faces. Tom Bonnor, with his great stat- 
ure and Norse features, his bright hair, fast becoming 
flecked with gray, his fearless blue eyes, that looked out 
bravely on the world, no matter how they blenched before 
the troubles in secret, looked a king beside the stubborn 
homeliness and rude dignity of Hammett’s father. 

Your son, sir,” said Tom, ‘‘ aspired too high when he 
asj)ired to my daughter. He was himself to blame, if, 
after coming to my house on the footing of an uninvited 
guest, and behind my back, he receives the treatment that 
such back-stairs admirers must expect.” 

Nigel Yorke stood rigid, the blood surging slowly up to 
his forehead till it made a dull patch there of purplish red. 

Uninvited!” he said slowly. ‘‘My son enters your 
house by the back stairs — and the honor is too great to as- 
j)ire to your daughter. Yes, by Heaven! The honor is too 
great for me, that I should see the son of an honest man 
allied to the daughter of a man whom I secretly know to 
be 2:>erfectly bankrupt!” 

Bet lifted her head in terror, and saw her father recede a 
step, while a chill blight seemed to pass across his features, 
but in the same moment she heard a steji behmd her, and 


78 


THE FASHIOH OF THIS WOELD. 


Hammett voice saying, “ Father and in the great 
shock of joy and relief his voice gave her, she cried out. 

Thank God!^^ as she ran to Tom. 

But he was erect and as usual when she reached him, 
and said: 

I will leave you, Elizabeth, to entertain your self-in- 
vited guests,” and turned andleft the room without a glance 
at them. 

Bet stood alone, and Nigel stood looking at his son, hag- 
gard and travel-stained, with all the soul in him looking ^ 
out of his sunken eyes, and those eyes fixed on her, 

“ Forgive me. Bet,” he said, and went to her and took 
her hand and kissed it humbly. She looked up, and then 
he saw how real and true had been the suffering he had 
cost her, and he forgot his own (as I think every true man 
does when he sees the pain of the woman he loves), and he 
saw how the sob climbed in her throat as she said, ‘‘ It is 
for you to forgive, Hammett, and once more I thank God 
that you have come back.^^ 

Come away,” said Nigel Yorke sternly, “the girl is 
fooling you again!” 

“ No,” said Bet, “ but we are friends now to our death. ” 
She kissed his hand more humbly, I think, than he had 
kissed hers, and before he was aware of her intention. 
Then she courtesied to his father, and turned from them 
both to one of the windows that overlooked the garden. 

Hammett stood where she had left him, his heart and 
eyes following her, but Nigel Yorkers glance traveled slow- 
ly round the room, appraising the satin furniture and the 
pictures at the price they would fetch beneath the ham- 
mer. 

“ Taste, sir, taste?” he said, in a loud, discordant voice, 
for which his slighted fatherly love, his bitter disappoint- 
ment mingled with his joy, may have accounted. “ Why, 
taste costs a man thousands a year, and damme, sir, taste 
makes many a man a bankrupt!” 


THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 


79 


“ Wliicli Mr. Bonnor never shall be/ ^ said Hammett^s 
stern young voice; but when Bet looked round she was 
alone. 


CHAPTER XV. 

Come back, turn back, my hireman chid, 

Turn back and speak wi’ me; 

Ye’ve served me lang for the lady’s sake, 

Come back and get your fee.” 

In the week that elapsed between Hammett^s return and 
Bet^s marriage an unexpected thing hapjDened to Tom Bon- 
nor. He received one morning a letter from his bankers to 
say that ten thousand pounds had been lodged to his credit 
by a relative whose name they were not at liberty to divulge, 
and they w^ere requested to say that under no circumstances 
would the money be taken back again, and if he refused to 
accept it, the sum would, in due course of time, revert to 
the Crown. 

Tom Bonnor^s face flushed scarlet as he read, and he 
brought his fist down on the table heavily, muttering 
“ Yorke,^^ then flung the letter from him, and let it lie 
there all that day and the next, not thinking of it, yet vivid- 
ly conscious of its presence there in every fiber of his body. 

On the third day he wrote to Mr. Y'orke, and asked him 
if he had had any communication with his (Mr. Bonnor’ s) 
bankers. 

Mr. Y'orke rejilied with equal curtness. He did not know 
the names of Mr. Bomior’s bankers; therefore could have 
no communication with them. He regretted the remarks 
he had made in the heat of anger, and desired to withdraw 
them. And he remained Mr. Bonnor ’s most obedient serv- 
ant, Nigel Y'orke. 

Then Tom Bonnor drew a deeji, long breath, as a man 
may who has not dared to breathe while his life hung in the 
balance, and he stretched out his hand for the letter that 


80 THE FASHION OF THIS AVORLD. 

lay beneath others, and, as he read it once more, his heart 
swelled and he thanked God. 

His wife found him sitting thus, and he drew her to his 
side and rested his head on that faithful breast as she 
stooped her head to kiss him. He never told her anything 
about business, and perhaps was wise, since if a woman 
will rejoice with her lord over good fortune, she is apt to 
twit him with incapacity when he meets ill luck. And so 
Tom Bonnor, full as he was of happiness, only kissed her 
the more tenderly for his joy, and began to think of what 
he should bring her back when he went to town. 

am so glad Hammett Yorke has come back, said 
Mrs. Bonnor, as she sat down to her knitting by the open 
window, ‘‘ it removes the only shadow there would have 
been on the wedding. 

‘‘You did very wrong, Mary, he said, “ to. let them 
come about the place as tliey did. I should blame the girls 
more if I were able to blame their mother less. 

“Oh, TomT’ she said, “you know they were mother- 
less, and they were all children together. 

“ But when they became young men and Avomen you 
should have spoken to me,^^ he said; “ but I can^t scold 
you to-day, Mary. Come out Avith me into the garden. 
There are some improvements I am thinking of making, 
and so they went out by way of the conservatory together. 

Bet, having an important message for her mother, vent-, 
ured to follow her to the study, but finding the two middle- 
aged love-birds fied, she sat down in her father ^s chair and 
gave way to thought. Happening to glance at the letters 
strewn about on the table, she read one-half through before 
its purport struck her. Then she seized it, re-read the 
first part, and so to the end. 

“ This is Hammett, she said aloud, and a great wave 
of pity and shame and love swept over her. What but the 
thought of her father's imminent ruin, a subject upon 


THE FASHION OF THIS WOKLD. 


81 


which she did not dare to approach him or communicate to 
her mother, had paled her cheek during the past week? 
She knew that Nigel Yorker’s words had sped home, and 
that they were the truth; her father^s ashen face had testi- 
fied to that as he turned and left the room. 

And Hammett must have heard those words, and by way 
of heaping coals of fire upon her head, he had somehow 
obtained this sum of money, and under the disguise of a 
‘‘ relative placed it at the disposal of her father. She 
did not need to read Nigel Yorkers letter through to be 
sure he had not done it. Such an act was incompatible 
with his rigid Calvinistic nature, and if he had abetted his 
son^s deed it must have been through some sacrifice of time 
and future expectations that would reduce Hammett to be 
mere bondsman to his father. 

She started up with the longing upon her to see him, to 
make him confess the truth, to thank him on her bended 
knees, even while she told him the thing was impossible 
and could not be. Some wild thought of breaking off her 
engagement with Mr. Newdegate, on her father ^s account, 
crowed her mind, and then, like a true woman, she thought 
of her wedding gown and cake, of the town all agape to be- 
hold her bridal; perhaps, too, some gentle thought of the 
man she had almost learned to love stayed her, and she got 
up from her father ^s chair and went away, intent only on 
seeing Hammett as soon as possible. 

She wrote only: ‘‘ I hope you will let me speak to you, 

I will be in the lane beneath Pople^s Well, at five o^clock 
this afternoon. — B et.’’^ 

She fastened it up, then wondered how she could send it. 
Not a Yorke had set foot in the garden since their father^s 
prohibition; perhaps Audrey could devise some means of 
conveying it to him, and Bet went in search of her. Alas, 
poor Audrey! millinery had driven authorship clean out of 
her head, and she was surveying with ecstasy the bride- 
maid ^s dress laid out on her little bed. 


82 THE FASHIOiN' OF THIS WORLD. 

‘‘ Carrots/^ said Bet, do you know where to find Ham- 
mett?’^ 

Audrey pushed the dress away and looked at her sister 
with earnest, reproachful eyes. 

‘‘Oh, Bet!^^ she said, “you’re nearly married now — 
and you mustn’t bep^in flirting again!” 

“ Nonsense,” said Bet; “can’t you answer a question? 
I want this letter taken to him at once, and I want an an- 
swer to it, too.” 

“ Are you going to many him instead of Mr. Newde- 
gate?” said Audrey, eying the billet mistrustfully; “ be- 
cause, if so, you ought to have made uj) your mind before.” 

Bet stamped her foot. 

“Answer me directly,” she said; “where is he to be 
found?” 

“ At Yorke’s Bridge,” said Audrey, “ where he sticks to 
business morning, noon, and night. I’ve walked over two 
or three times to tiy and catch him coming out, but he is 
always at work, and I never see liim. ” 

“ Then I can not send him this,” said Bet in a tone of 
such acute disappointment that Audrey’s heart was touched, 
and tying on her sun-bonnet, she took the billet and an- 
nounced her immediate departure to dehver it. 

“But supposing you meet father— or 5 father?” said 
Bet, in some alarm. But Audrey had vanished, and a 
quarter of an hour later a funny little figure might have 
been seen wending its way between the two piles of build- 
ings, shut in by great gates, that went by the name of 
Yorke’s Bridge. 

The ceaseless roar and whir of machinery deafened her 
as she flew on, trusting to chance to find Hammett, and 
passing the open door of the engine-room, she looked in, 
and saw him standing in the midst of the moving, throb- 
bing mass of iron and steel. Audrey crept unobserved to 
his side. 

Hammett saw her presently, and the scrap of white 


THE FASHIOH OF THIS WOKLD. 


83 


paper in her hand, and his face hardened as he took and 
read it, with the thundering, throbbing pulses of the 
engines making vibrations in the air about them. Then he 
stepped down, and she followed him out into the light and 
air that seemed to be almost silent after the chamber they 
had left. 

“ Say that I will be there, he said slowly and unwilling- 
ly; then, touched by something in the little face at the end 
of the sun-bonnet, he framed it in one hand, and looked at 
her very kindly. 

DonH grow up a flirt, little one,-’^ he said, then turned 
back to his work, and Audrey sped off on the wings of the 
wind. 

At five o^ clock that afternoon he saw, turning the bend of 
the lane toward him, a charming figure in a white gown 
and muslin fichu knotted on the breast, a large white hat 
whose curling feathers inclosed her head as with a nimbus, 
and a pair of white mittens on the little hands that dis- 
played but one of the simplest gifts her lover had ever made 
her. 

Hammett moved at once to meet her, but he did not 
speak. His glance, if sad, was indifierent, nor did the 
tears in the eyes she lifted to his move him; he simply 
waited for her to explain her errand, and gave no help 
whatever. 

She crossed and uncrossed her slender fingers more than 
once before she said: 

“ Hammett, it is you who have sent my father ten thou- 
sand pounds, because you thought that what Mr. Yorke 
said was the truth. 

‘‘ You are speaking in riddles, he said. ‘‘ How should 
a young tradesman, a mere servant of his father, have ten 
thousand pounds to give away? And I am glad,^^ he spoke 
more slowly and a curious expression crossed his features, 
“that what my father -said to Mr. Bonnor was not the 
truth. 


THE FASHION- OF THIS WORLD. 

How can I cried Bet. “We know nothing of 

his affairs; but be they good or bad, he can not take that 
ten thousand pounds, and he shall not. 

Hammett shook back his shoulders as if the subject from 
being uninteresting had become tiresome. 

“You have taken a very foolish idea into your head,^^ 
he said, “ and on thinking it over calmly I am sure you 
will see how impossible it is. If I had the power, it is 
hardly likely I should have the desire to throw my heritage 
into the lap of a man who places me in the same category 
as his butcher and baker. But I am glad to have an op- 
portunity of speaking to you once more. I want to tell 
you that I know I behaved like a coward and a fool — and 
worse, in going away as I did and hiding my whereabouts 
from everybody, but now I have come back to do my duty, 
and I will do it. 

Bet stood looking at him, convinced to her inmost soul 
that he was denying his own deed, but she did not know, 
probably she never would know, that he had sold himself 
as a good and chattel to his father for many years, that he 
had placed it out of his power to many or enjoy those best 
years of his life, and all that he might save from ruin the 
father of the girl who stood before him. 

“ I did not know there were such men in the world as 
you,'’^ she said, “ and I hope some day I may be a better 
woman for having known you. And you will wish me 
good-bye?^^ 

“ Good-bye, he said, and j^ut out a cold hand that she 
took and held fast between both her own. 

Bet, being a woman, could think of only one consolation, 
so timidly stretching her arm, and bowing the lofty uncov- 
ered head toward her, she stood on tiptoe, and kissed his 
forehead. 

Cold as ice he submitted. Passion was dead in him, and 
no throb of love leajied at the touch of those tender lips. 


THE FASHIOK OF THIS WOKLD. 


85 


But that he might not use her discourteously, he took her 
hands and kissed them before he turned away and left her. 


CHAPTER XVL 
“ Change of mind is not inconsistency.” 

A GIRL of about thirteen was kneeling outside a door 
with her ear to the key-hole, listening with all her might. 
Gradually an anxious, then a distressed, finally a terrified 
expression overspread her face, and she rose to her feet, 
pressing both hands to her ears. 

A rosy little maid, looking very important, came run- 
ning through the hall and stopped at the sight of Audrey 
standing in that attitude of distraction. 

WhaPs the matter?^^ she said. ‘‘ Pve been looking 
for you everywhere. 

‘‘Patty,^^ said the girl, removing her hands, are you 
talking very loudly to me?^^ 

Patty nodded. 

IVe often spoken to you lately, she said, ‘‘ and you 
haveiiT seemed to hear, so I always shout a little bit now. 

A tremble ran through Audrey; a cold hand seemed to 
be slowly crushing the life out of her as she stood looking 
with dilated eyes at the little sister who had spoken her 
doom. 

Oh! she could not, would not bear it; to be shut out 
from everything, from all human voices, from every glad 
sound of the life she so passionately loved; to be a poor, 
earless, uncomprehending dummy, with 

“ Wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.” 

Oh, Patty 1^^ she cried, all white and trembling, ‘‘ it is 
a mistake; I can hear everything quite well; it is because 
this door is so thick I could not catch what father and 
mother are saying.'’^ 


80 THE FASHION OF THIS WOKLD. 

‘‘ Mustn't listen/' said Patty, shaking her pretty head; 
‘ ‘ only sneaks listen. ' ' 

“ But Sally Brass has been complaining about me this 
morning," said Audrey; “ and I wanted to know if they 
were going to send me to school, so I listened; and I 
couldn't hear," she added, her voice breaking suddenl}^ 

Got a cold, I expect," said Patty, who was extremely 
practical. 

Very likely," said Audrey, brightening, but only for 
a moment. “ You noticed it before to-day." She looked 
reproachfully at Patty. 

We'll get mother to take you to a doctor," said Patty, 
who was growing impatient. ‘‘ But I've got some news 
for you. Oh, such news; come along upstairs directly." 

They climbed the stairs hand in hand, but when they had 
got to a safe place, Patty locked the door and, with round 
eyes of delight, drew from her pocket a little three-cornered 
note which she held out to Audrey. 

“ For meV^ cried Audrey, with a gasp of joy. 

“ For you! From that nice-looking boy, you know, that 
you fell in love with and meant to send a valentine to. He 
threw it over the wall as I was walking in the garden just 
now; so I just said ‘ thank you,' and ran in with it. " 

But Audrey scarcely heard her. Sitting cross-legged on 
the floor with the unopened note in her hand, what bliss,, 
vvhat joy was hers! I don't think any love-letter she ever 
read later in life gave her one tithe of the happiness that 
this one did, for Audrey was of a susceptible heart, and 
though she had fallen in love many times, no one had hith- 
erto returned her affections. Had she not, the night before 
last Valentine' s-day, remained sleepless with expectation of 
what the morrow would bring her, and when seven or eight 
big envelopes were put into her trembling hands how did 
she rush away to privacy and with a heart bursting with 
ecstasy, ecstasy to be changed to bitter tears of wrath and 


THE FASiriON OF THIS WOELH. 


87 


shame when one by one she discovered her valentines to be 
ugly ones! 

And I regret to say that all Audrey^s passionate yearn- 
ings, aspirations, and desires after greatness and goodness 
had, during the past three years, been so entirely clogged 
and choked by the increasing vanity and love of finery that 
she was, at thirteen, in appearance and manner, very like 
any other girl of her age, and those depths in her nature 
that she had formerly not been able to plumb now seemed 
to have turned to shallows. 

Slowly she now unfolded the delicious missive, and as 
slowly read it. What was there in it but the silly stuff a 
school-boy of fifteen writes to a girl a year or two younger? 
But how sweetly it reads, what thrills the mere shape of the 
note sends through you, what an exquisite pride and com- 
placency is yours to think that somebody has given you the 
veiy best that it is in his power to give — a love-letter! 

Oh, Patty, she said at last, with a deep sigh of utter 
bliss, what would Kenneth say if he could see it?^^ 

He would tell mother, said Patty, ‘‘ and you would 
be sent to school. 

Audrey^s face changed, her spell of pure happiness was 
over. 

‘‘ I forgot, she said, “ of course, Patty, he would not 
care for a girl who is deaf, ” 

Stuff, said Patty; but what does he say?^’’ 

Lots of things; and that he hopes we are going out for 
a walk this afternoon, and he will be on the lookout for 
us. But of course we can^t get out without Sally. 

Perhaps he is outside the garden wall now. Let — ’ ^ 
Supposing he caught us?^^ said Audrey, blushing. 

'‘Not he! Come along. And they caught up then 
thin cloaks and drew the hoods over their heads. As they 
did so, the contrast of their two faces, reflected in the 
glass, struck Audrey forcibly, and she exclaimed : 

“ Oh, Patty, if only I were as pretty as you are!^^ 


88 THE FASHIOK OF THIS WORLD. 

YouVe got beautiful legs/" said Patty sturdily; '' mine 
are dumplings. "" 

But the dumplings trotted very softly and fast down the 
stairs and out by the side entrance of the big house by the 
sea to which Tom Bonnor had removed himself and house- 
hold for the winter. 

A chill January wind was blowing, and tossed Patty "s 
bright locks about, and Audrey" s red ones, as they gingerly 
approached the wall that sloped downward to the town and 
divided the grounds of East Cliff from the road. 

As one of the two ruffled heads topped the wall, a good- 
looking youth of about sixteen looked up from below and 
saw it. 

He pulled off his hat and looked a httle sheepish, but as 
Patty"s sweet little face nodded and beamed on him with 
perfect friendliness, he came a few steps nearer and said : 

“You got my letter?"" 

Patty nodded again, and retreating, pushed Audrey for- 
ward, and held her there, being convinced that for two pins 
her sister would have run away. 

When he saw the red locks, tossed about in Medusa-like 
style, the freckled skin, the eager green eyes that had taken 
the place of Patty" s little flower face, he removed his hat 
again, but had nothing to say. 

“ Tell him you got his letter,"" whispered Patt}^ holding 
Audrey by main force, and Audrey said, chilled in some 
way that she could not understand: 

“ I — I got your letter. It was very nice. I am very 
much obliged to you. "" 

I think there must have been some tiling good and cliiv- 
alrous in his heart, for when he saw the mistake into wliich 
she had fallen, he choked back his disappointment, and, 
while longing for a peep at the little fairy who had stolen 
his heart, looked bravely at Audrey and said: 

“ Then I shall see you this afternoon?"" and not waiting 
for an answer, descended the hill. 


THE FASHIOH OF THIS WORLD. 


89 


Patty/ ^ said Audrey, as she turned slowly round, ‘‘ do 
you know that for one awful moment I thought we had 
made a mistake, and that it was you for whom he meant 
the letter — though you are such a little girl — not quite 
eleven years old ! And when I was your age I never thought 
of such a thing as a sweetheart. I only wrote about theml^^ 


CHAPTER XVII. 

■"We can. not guess thee in the wood, or hear thee in the wind; 

Our cedars must fall round us ere we see the light behind. 

Ay, sooth we feel too strong in weal to heed thee on that road, 

But woe being come, the soul is dumb and crieth not on God.” 

Durihg the past three years Tom Bonnor^s family had 
greatly diminished,, though on the other hand he had been 
provided various grandchildren by his four daughters. For 
they were all gone now. Through the breach that Bet had 
made, all the others had crept, and one by one they had re- 
turned from visits only to brmg a serious lover in their 
train, and after due resistance by Tom Bonnor, be mar- 
ried to their own glory and the secret spite of the unaiipro- 
priated spinsters of Cricklehorn. 

Cecily had broken faith some months with Jem when 
news came that he had been thrown from a buck- jumper 
and killed on the spot; but as he never knew her unfaith- 
fulness, no one had any occasion to fret over it, unless it 
might be Stephen, who worked on alone at the farm ujion 
which he was employed, with nothing in sight but his 
friend ^s grave to put him in mind of home. 

Yet with this diminished family, Tom Bonnor^s expenses 
never seemed to be less than when thirteen rosy, healthy 
faces clustered round his table. The ten thousand pounds 
that he had come to look upon as only an act of reparation 
from a distant relative who had inherited money, Tom 
regarded as his jight. It had cleared him of debt certainly. 


90 


THE FASHION OF THIS WOELD. 


but once clear, the old system of living beyond his income 
continued. Nigel Yorke would smile grimly when, on foot, 
he would be passed by Tom Bonnor in his pink, magnifi- 
cently mounted, another horse having been sent on before:, 
he would smile, but perhaps less unkindly when, the im- 
age of health and prosperity, Tom Bonnor would walk into 
church with his flock of married and unmarried children 
about him, and then Nigel would look at his tall, resolute- 
eyed son, and he would think of the man who sold his 
birthright for a mess of pottage. 

Bet alone had never come to sun Cricklehorn with her 
glories. She had seen all her people either at her house in 
town, or she had met them at the sea-side, but to her old 
home she would not come, so that folks said she was proud 
or ashamed of the place in which she had been bred. 

Audrey seldom saw Hammett now; nor, indeed, any of 
the young faces that had formerly been as famihar about 
the place as those of her own people. Sometimes a chill 
sense of cold would come over her as she looked around ; all 
were gone, the sisters, the young men, the gayety, and a 
governess ruled in the school -room from which all the old 
ease and mirth had departed. Kenneth was at Marlbor- 
ough; and, for sheer lack of company, Audrey had to make 
a companion of Patty, who did her more good than either 
supposed, by the cheerfulness of her temper and the ro- 
bustness of a philosophy strongly opposed to all morbid or 
self-centered thought. And, as I have said, vanity and a 
profound love of smart clothes were at this time distinguish- 
ing marks of Audrey, also a predilection for falling in love, 
somewhat checked by being always imrequited. But now, 
however late in the day, she felt herself beloved, and proud- 
ly her foot spurned the earth that afternoon when, a,cconi- 
panied by the vigilant Sally Brass and Patty, they walked 
upon the Cobb wall, and in the distance she espied a noble 
army of youths approaching, in the midst of which the eye 
of love detected her Henry. - 


THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 91 

How she rubbed her cheeks to make the color come; how 
she drew herself up and turned her toes out, and hoped the 
wind had not made her eyes water and her nose red! 

They were coming nearer and nearer; her heart beat to 
suffocation. He had changed his place so as to be outside 
and next to her as he passed. Could he have got another 
note for her, or did he expect one himself? 

“ Yes, Audrey,’^ said Sally^s unmodulated harsh voice, 
sounding in her ears as if from a long way off, “ IVe spok- 
en to you three times, and there no doubt of it, youT’e 
getting deaf. 

Audrey stopped, the little color that was in her pale face 
d.}dng suddenly out of it. 

Deaf?^’ she said, while great tears gathered in her eyes 
a7id froze there. Oh, donT say that!^^ she cried, in a 
voice of agony that might have turned a stone, and feeling 
as if in her highest moment of triumph and happiness some 
one had stabbed her to the heart. 

What are they pitchmg into that little girl for?^'’ said 
one of the approaching young men. ‘‘ It^s a beastly shame 
the way those governesses put upon children. 

Sally heard the opprobrious epithet with which she had 
been described, and with her long, knobby red nose in- 
flamed with anger, instantly prepared to give battle to the 
advancing foe. 

Mind your own business, young jackanapes, she said, 
as they came up and involuntarily paused. ‘‘ If I were 
your school-master I’d teach you better manners. ” 

But what is the matter?” said Henry, when his friend 
had retorted with an invitation to Sally to embrace him. 

‘‘Don’t tell hi.m!” cried poor Audrey, white and wild. 
“ He would never — never — but, oh, don’t, donH tell him.’’ 

Sally snorted, She was an under-bred, coarse-minded 
woman, utterly incajiable of understanding the girl’s mor- 
bidly sensitive mind. 


92 


THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 


“ What is there to tell?'’^ she said loudly; ‘‘ and who 
cares what a pack of school-boys hear?^'’ 

But Audrey waited to hear no more. Her face white with 
agony, she gave one despairing look at her sweetheart and 
fled. 

“ What have you been saying to her, you ugly old 
woman he cried angrily. 

Sally was not a person to make two bites at a cherry. 
She deliberately slapped his face with her whole might; then 
said, ‘‘ She^s gone suddenly deaf, and Fve just told her so, 
and that^s what^s the matter. And now you can go home 
and write to your mother about it. And she dragged 
Patty after Audrey’s flying figure. 

Henry did go home soon afterward, but he did not write 
to his mother; he wrote to Audrey. 

No one could find the girl all that evening, though every 
corner of the house was searched; but at midnight she was 
found sitting up in her bed, undressed, but cold and rigid, 
and with thumbs crooked firmly over her fingers. 

It was the mother, anxious and terrified, who found her; 
and, in the relief Audrey’s presence gave her, she found no 
heart for rebuke. 

“ My child,” she said, as she kissed her, “ where have 
you been all this time?” 

“ Lying under a tree,” said Audrey, in a curiously odd, 
starved voice. “ Mother, do you know that I am deaf?” 

No, no, my child,” said the mother, keeping back her 
tears. ‘‘ It will pass, and papa says I must take you to 
London to-morrow for an opinion.” 

Audrey shook her head. 

It will be no good,” she said. I always felt that I 
should have some great trouble besides being born ugly and 
bad-tempered, and now it has come, and I don’t think it’s 
fair, mother; but I don’t think God has ever been fair to 
me from the beginning,” 


THE FASHIOH OF THIS WORLD. 93 

The mother took the cold hands and began gently to rub 
them. A tear fell on one, and Audrey looked up, and the 
frozen founts of her eyes were unsealed. 

DonT cry, mother,"' she said; ‘‘perhaps I shall be a 
better girl now, and you will love me better. But I want 
you to send me to school directly. I must get over it by 
myself and away from home. And perhaps I sha'n't be 
punished so very heavily. Perhaps I shall be allowed to 
hear a little, ” 

Mrs. Bonnor murmured a few words as she went on rub- 
bing warmth into the cold, contracted fingers. 

“ My hands didn't get like that because I had been crying 
with temper, mother," said Audrey. “ One does not cry 
for things hke this, and one does not grow angry. It is 
afterward, when one is beginning to get over it, that one 
can make a fuss." 

sjc ♦ * :j« * * 4: 

On the morrow Audrey was taken to London; there she 
was examined, tortured, and there the fiat was pro- 
nounced. Her deafness was of a kind that is incurable, 
that is usually progressive, and sometimes rapidly so. 
On the other hand, it might reach a stage at which it would 
remain stationary, and she would be neither more nor less 
deaf than she then was for the remainder of her life. To 
what degree would this deafness reach was the problem with 
which Audrey vexed her soul as they journeyed home. 
Would she still be able to hear human voices, exchange 
human thoughts with her kind? 

But her longing to get away knew no abatement, even 
though she got a kind little letter every day from the sweet- 
heart whose careless soul had been profoundly moved by the 
intensity of her suffering at the calamity that had fallen 
upon her. 


94 


THE FASHION OF THIS WOKLD. 


CHAPTER XVIIL 

“ There’s music in all things, if men liad ears; 

There’s music in the sighing of a reed, 

There’s music in the gushing of a rill.” 

Mrs. Bohhor understood her daughter less than ever 
when, from the depths of an almost tearless despair she 
leaped up to brilliant spirits and, even when quiet, looked 
happy, as if she had some secret source of consolation. One 
day she begged her mother to let her have a scarlet cloak 
with a little hood to it, tied with black velvet, and no 
arguments could induce her to change her mind; so the 
cloak was bought, and one for Patty as well, and people 
said, what a pity it was Mrs. Bonnor had such bad taste, 
and that she could not see how Audrey’s hair almost ex- 
tinguished the color of the cloth! 

But Audrey wore it with perfect satisfaction, and curled 
her hair in double rows of ringlets, and seemed to forget 
her misfortune altogether in the week or two that elapsed 
before her departure to the school which had already been 
chosen for her. 

He would be going back to Uppingham about the same 
time, so why should she mind going away, too? And she 
spent one half of her time in reading his letters, and the 
other half in replying to them, in no whit dashed by the 
fact that often as she passed him out-of-doors, she had not 
once spoken to him since the day that she and Patty had 
looked at him over the garden wall. 

Eor Sally Brass was lynx-eyed, and suspicious as well, 
and perhaps Audrey was not sony to have all the joys of 
courtship by letter, without the shyness of her little ugly 
face to come between them. And she might not be able 
to hear what he said, and how dreadful that would be! 
Meanwhile, one of Henry’s friend’s, a rather sad-faced long 


THE FASHIOH OF THIS WOELD. 95 

nosed youth, had conceived an ardent affection for her, and 
one day Patty appeared with two letters, instead of one. 
Audrey felt as much insulted as if she were already Henryks 
wife. Wild ideas of a possible duel between them crossed 
her mind, but wdien she had torn the note up and sent him 
back the pieces, she contented herself with giving him a 
haughty glance when she met him, like any other belle to 
whose favor imdue pretensions had been made. But nothing 
abashed, Charley wrote her another, and continued to do 
so every day until Audrey, respecting the sincerity of his 
attachment, took to reading them with toleration and some 
condescending pity. To be sure, he gave her a shock by 
writing, Except these verses, but then, of course, it was 
not for him to know that she was an authoress and a judge. 

But one cold morning Audrey awoke to the fact that to- 
morrow she was going to school; that books, not looks, 
would now be her study; and, the excitement of the past 
fortnight vanishing, she remembered her deafness (which 
as yet was hardly remarkable), and began to tremble. 
Then she remembered that she had promised to give Henry 
a lock of her red hair and wish him good-bye over the 
garden wall at seven o^clock. 

True, the hour was early, but it would be dark then, and 
she would not feel so ashamed when she made him the little 
speech she intended, as if he could see her face. So she 
cut off one long, thick tress, and by the light of a candle, 
tied it up with string, then pulled her little hood over her 
head and stole down-stairs. 

The servants were abroad. The great hall door yielded 
to her touch, and she went out into the cold rawness of the 
January morning, her feet taking her, by memory rather 
than sight, to the wall. 

A kind hand closed upon hers as she reached it, and she 
started a little, thinking that he was on the other side. 
Then she miclosed her fingers to give him the lock of hair, 
and said: 


96 THE FASIIIOiT OF THIS WOELD. 

“You have been very kind to a deaf little girl, sir, and I 
am very sorry to wish you good-bye/^ 

‘‘ But I shall write to you, Audrey,^" said the young man 
twice a week, at least; and you must write to me/^ 

‘‘ Perhaps they woiPt let me,^^ she said, hut I want you 
to remember this, if I never see you again: you have made 
me happy when I was most wretched, and I shall never 
forget it; I shall put you in my bookP^ 

Thank you,^^ he said, and kissed her little hand. A 
moment and she was gone. How could he tell that though 
they should never meet again, he had unconsciously furnished 
to her the type of a chivalrous lover, and thereby raised the 
standard of manhood in that young and ductile mind? And 
if tliis episode — and it was no more — has been overlong 
dwelt on in Audrey’s life, it is because it was destined to 
have a lasting influence upon her. 


CHAPTER XIX. 

The one red leaf, the last of its clan, 

That dances as often as dance it can. 

Hanging so light and hanging so high, 

On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.” 

Kkeelihg one morning at prayers in the great Hauntry 
school-room, Audrey looked up at the tree upon which her 
eyes had been fixed every morning, save in the holidays, for 
three years, and her heart swelled as she looked at the top- 
most twig and knew that by sheer will and perseverance she 
had reached it. 

On the very first morning, when cold, deaf, and nervous, 
she had knelt here in the midst of strangers, she had marked 
one twig that shot up far beyond his fellows, and she had said 
to herself: ‘‘ I will be that twig; I will fight, I will conquer 
here in spite of my drawbacks, and when I leave this school 
I will be the head of it.” Every day the twig had reminded 


THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 97 

her of her vow; every day she amassed something new, con- 
quered some difficulty; and, though hated by those whose 
idleness she put to shame, and heavily handicapped by her 
misfortime, she rose steadily above the heads of her elders 
and at sixteen was at the head of the school. Her intelli- 
gence was perhaps more brilliant than deep; she learned 
with extraordinary rapidity and forgot some things with 
equal quickness, but all that she learned, all that she did, 
she made subordinate to the one main idea of her life — to 
become a writer. 

The romance submitted to her sisters so long ago had 
disappeared and others had taken its place, only to be 
destroyed in due turn; but lately a real story had been 
growing u]) in her mind, and informed by the heart, her 
hand now produced good work; and as she felt the power 
move in her, Audrey^ s heart leaped, and immeasurably 
nearer to her came the goal she had so sternly kept before 
her eyes. 

Deep in her heart was the firm, earnest resolve to he 
something; to strive, to work, to achieve; she felt as one 
who has a mission when presently she rose from her knees, 
and straight and clear before her she seemed to see the i^atli 
of duty and of glory. 

Yet she wept when she stood up in the carriage to look 
back at the place that had sheltered her through the three 
most critical years of her life. 

Peace she had had there,but there was passion too, and there 
she had suffered and wakened early to a woman^s heritage of 
love and sorrow. She had lived out her romance and had come 
out of it strengthened and with less passionate yearnings after 
an unknown good that had tormented her when she was a 
child. As the gates clanged to behind her, a sense that she 
was leaving the best part of her youth forever smote upon 
her heai-t; and as the horses descended to the valley so her 
spirit seemed to sink with them, and the chill mists of dis- 
coiuagement were wafted up to meet her from below. 

4 


98 


THE FASHION OF THIS WOKLD. 


‘ ‘ He left Ills home with a bounding heart. 

For the world was all before him; 

And felt it scarce a pain to part, 

Such sun-bright beams came o’er him. 

He turned him to visions of future years 
(For the rainbow’s hues were round him), 

And a father’s bodings, a mother’s tears, 

Might not weigh with the hopes that crowned him.” 

Have you read to the end of that Epicedeiim, the most 
mournful, the most exquisite surely m the whole English 
language? Mothers who have never heard it, know its every 
line and word by heart; but Audrey^s will rejected the latter 
verses as, emerging from the valley, the horses rested for a 
moment on the hill and the sun shone out, and a breath of 
warm air played on her brow. For a moment she looked 
back, but only for a moment. Her thoughts now were 
forward, and with the life that she was about to begin. 


CHAPTER XX. 

‘ ‘ In prayers that upward mount, 

Like to a fair summit fount 
Which is gushing back upon you 
Hath an upper music won you.” 

A STERN-FACED youiig man, the servant of his brothers, 
from whom he received no wages, though he eat their 
bread and dwelt in one of their houses, looked across the 
church one Sunday morning in his usual clear, unseen way, 
and met two eyes that quickened his own into life. In 
that look their spirits and lives seemed to mingle; both 
were so indomitable in will, so strenuous in endeavor, and 
alas! both so weak in result, so pitilessly handicapped by 
fate — the one hopeless of the future, the other nearly so, yet 
both persisting with stubborn feet along the path that each 
had deliberately chosen. 

Some people begin to suffer in their cradles; something 


THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 


99 


in them, a soul perhaps newly caught, cries out in them, at 
first audibly, then gradually stifled into sobs, then silence 
as the years draw on, and the empty chamber in which it 
dwelt has forgotten that it ever held a tenant. Woe unto 
those from whom the spiritual presence has forever departed, 
unheeded, unlistened for! For it is but the shape of a 
human being that lives and moves when that God-given 
essence has left it. How came two such faces as Audrey 
Bonnor^s and Hammett Yorkers vis-a-vis in a sleepy coun- 
try church where folks fugitively remembered their souls 
once a week, and never thought of them during the other 
-days of their existence? Yet a glance round would have 
shown that time had not stood still, even if those present 
saw themselves in fancied looking-glasses and beheld no 
change. The place of Nigel Yorke was empty; the seat of 
Tom Bonnor held a very different Tom from the one who 
was wont to march up the aisle with his brilliant queue of 
white slaves behind him, as handsome a peacock^ s train as 
you could wish to see. His once ruddy face had paled, and 
the change in him seemed to be reflected in his wife yonder. 
The babies were growing up, her arms were empty, the 
gentle round of motherly and monotonous cares that suffice 
amply to fill some women^s lives was at an end, and a 
vague restlessness seemed to have grown in her mind, wast- 
ing her comely cheek and figure, and giving to her voice a 
sharpness hitherto unknown to it. 

She thought oftener now of Stephen than of her younger 
children; of Kenneth, rather than of Audrey and Patty; 
and spent long hours in writing letters to foreign parts, and 
all her spare money (said Audrey) in stamping them. All 
the married daughters had made their homes far away, and 
all were practically lost to their parents, save when at long 
intervals they revisited the parent nest, observing with 
shocked eyes how an air of shabbiness, of desuetude even, 
was creeping over it, even though what they called father^s 
extravagance had been in no sense curtailed. 


100 THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 

Perhaps it was because Bet now occasionally occuiiied 
her old corner in the family pew that Hammett had not for 
years turned his eyes in that direction, and now with a sud- 
den shock he realized that Audrey had grown intoawQman. 
Ay, and a woman with aims higher than his, with duty as 
strong in her as in him. Unconsciously they met and stood 
on equal ground, but the hopelessness in the man^s eyes 
was not. matched by the maiden ^s. For all that he had 
done had been in vain; Tom Bonnor was as much ruined 
now as he had been half a dozen years ago. and Bet was 
not worth the sacrifice the young man had made. 

When his father died, speaking neither in curse nor in 
blessing to his eldest son, but ignoring him as he had virt- 
ually done since he gave him his portion, and struck him 
out of his will at the precise time when Tom Bon nor fort- 
unes were rehabilitated, a great bitterness flowed over Ham- 
mett^ s soul, and with his father his youth died, and the gray 
life of early middle age began. 

Two of his younger brothers were married, the rest in- 
dulged in endless courtships, and in the midst of some 
real happiness and much frivolity he moved like a silent 
reproach, though in his heart he grudged not one of them 
his happiness. In the working of his brother's business he 
found relief but no distraction from the pain that his 
starved life brought 'him. And it was the folly, the futility 
of his sacrifice that imbittered him most. 

But to-day, looking across at the great diamond-paned 
window, his eyes had somehow been arrested on the way, 
and a younger soul, as tortured, as restless, had met his. 
Did it belong to the little girl who had been his firm friend 
with Bet always, who had carried her love letters, and 
stolen to him in the engine-room, inviting him to that last 
interview in which he had denied liis own work? 

Perhaps, in the preoccupation of Audrey’s life at school 
and at home, Hammett had gradually receded into a mem- 
ory rather than a presence, and as we are prone to avoid 


THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 101 

what avoids us^ she had thought of him less and less as the 
years went by. How should she know of the sacrifice he 
had made? She saw only a young man upon whose brow 
the mark of sullenness (that basest manifestation of suffer- 
ing) grew and deepened, and gradually she had concluded 
that Bet was right when she chose Mr. Newdegate with his 
gifts rather than Hammelt with his drawbacks of temper 
and disposition. For she knew of no difference in his posi- 
tion as eldest son of his father ^s house and successor to all 
its advantages, and there was no one to undeceive her. She 
never gossiped with servants, and the visitors were rare in- 
deed who knocked at the door of Tom Bonnor^s house now, 
while the grounds had long ceased to be infested by lovers 
and wqjromptii, callers. Only Audrey and Patty and the 
younger children were at home now. One by one the boys 
had wearied of idleness as Stephen had done, and after a 
vain appeal to Tom to start them in life, each had gone out 
alone into the world, and while seekmg his fortune was con- 
tent if he found bread. Did some sense of shame steal 
over the father as the years went by and the contrast be- 
tween his son^s present and their luxurious bringing up was 
forced upon his mind? Did not the mother remember with 
bitter pangs the soft, round baby creatures, sheltered so 
fondly in her arms, now grown into hungry, eager, striving 
youths, their lodging of the hardest, their food of the 
barest, their clothing scanty and coarse as formerly it had 
been soft and abundant? 

Into these ungenial surroundings, into this graying at- ■ 
mosphere of care, had been plunged the girl whose heart 
was so full of boimding hope, so rooted in the belief that in 
herself lay the power of reversmg the adverse fortunes of 
her family. 

And so, while others slept, she toiled at fashioning into 
words the bright thoughts, the impressions, whether of eye 
or heart, that came to her. Long ago she had accepted 
her deafness as natural, and no longer raged against it. 


102 


THE FASHION OF THIS WOKLD. 


Rather she walked secure in its solitude, and in the un- 
broken silence her thoughts marched unchecked. But over 
all that she wrote a fine critical sense watched and often 
compelled her to tear it up fifty times over until she had 
brought it into truer harmony with the voices that her 
spiritual ear obeyed. Somehow, I like to think of this poor 
Audrey at this point of her career, sitting jiatiently at her 
table at early morning, at midnight, at noon of day, her 
slender hand and pen the only bulwark between her home 
and ruin. 


CHAPTER XXL 

‘‘ The saint sustained it, but the woman* died.” 

One day the news ran through Cricklehorn like wild-fire 
that Tom Bonnor’s house was in the possession of bailiffs, 
and that he himself had disappeared. 

The news touched A'orke’s Bridge in its flight, and Ham- 
mett hearing it put on his coat and went straight to the 
house that he had never entered since he left it with his 
father nigh on eight years ago. 

The door was open, some great carts laden with straw 
waited outside. A gaping crowd jieered in at the hall and 
garden beyond as he strode through the door- way and went 
in. Already the jilace was full of moving shapes, dirty, 
greasy, intent only on their work of entirely gutting the 
2 dace within a given number of hours. 

What are you doing here?^^ he said furiously, as, look- 
ing in at the dining-room door, he saw a group seated 
round Tom^s table, to which only the pencil of a Hogarth 
could have done justice. 

“ WeTe just a ^aving a cup of tea,^^ said the foremost of 
the gang, nodding his dirty head insolently at Hammett, 
“ and then weh’e just a-going to work again — that’s about 
the size of it. ” 

All the pictures in the room had been taken do^\Ti from 


THE FASHIO^r OF THIS WORLD. 


103 


the panels; the great brass shields, and the oak carvings 
and the bronzes, were beside them; one or two marble busts 
occupied the same abased positions, and Clytie had sus- 
tained a damage to her nose in the process of removal. 
The carpet was rolled up, the chairs were locked in jiairs, 
the curtains had been taken down, and the July sun 
streamed full on the scene of devastation and its horrible 
intruders as Hammett gave one look round and passed out. 

In the yellow room the process of despoliation Avas com- 
plete. All was ready for removal, and the library beyond 
was completely dismantled also, with every evidence of 
Tom Bonnor’s occupation swept clean away. In the bloom- 
ing conservatory the flowers still stood, silent Avitnesses to 
their “Superiority to the Avork of the human race. 

But they seemed cruel to Hammett as he turned aAvay, 
and passing through the yellow room ascended the stone 
staircase that led to the drawing-room and to the different 
apartments that lay to its right and left. 

Half of the beautiful room was dismantled, its china 
packed in crates, and all the thousand signs of feminine occu- 
pation gone; its satin furniture piled up in the center, the 
pictures packed and leaning from the floor against the wall. 

Hoav vividly he remembered Avhen last he came here. 
Noav, as he came out, he hesitated a moment, then went up 
the steps that led to the mother ^s room, of Avhich the door, 
like all the rest in the house, stood Avide open. 

Before he reached its threshold, he knew that the room 
was not empty. Close against the AvindoAv, Avith four or flve 
children huddled about her, sat Mrs. Bonnor Avith an open 
Bible on her knee. In it were inscribed all the births of her 
children, and no deaths, and out of the Avreck of all that she 
had lived among for thirty years she had chosen it, and dis- 
daining all the trinkets — the valuables that were her own — 
had folded her hands upon it, and sat down quietly to Avait 
for Tom. 

She did not look up as Hammett ^s step drew near her; 


104 THE FASHIOX OF THIS IVORLD. 

slie took it for one of those hateful ones that had desecrated 
the jdace since Tom had ridden out on early and unusual 
business that morning. 

And Hammett, looking beyond, did not dare to cross to 
heii Had he not in liis youthful madness flung all away 
for Bet? He could have saved her mofher now — and 
Audrey. It was for her that he was looking when he 
turned away, and traversing the long passage that ended in 
a flight of steps reached the blue room, and found the door 
closed. 

Hisjiand trembled as it knocked, and he heard her say 

Come in. AYhen he had turned the handle he saw her 
standing at the far end of the room by a table that appar- 
ently no hand had touched, though every other movable be- 
longing there had changed places. There were no manu- 
scrijits visible, no notes; only half a dozen shabby volumes 
that included the legendary ballads of England and Scot- 
land, a “ Roget^s Thesaurus of English ^Yords ^d 
Phrases, a “ Shakesjieare,^^ a “ Keats,^^ and a “Shel- 
ley.- 

But in the midst of the blotting-paper lay an himible- 
enough-looking letter — the silent acknowledgment of the 
work that for fourteen years had been growing and jierfect- 
ing itself in a girPs mind. It was the letter of a famous 
publishuig firm, whose representative accepted her work 
;;iid named his terms. It had come to her early that morn- 
- ig, and with steady hands and trembling heart she had sat 
cown to read it. Then, with the passionate mstinct of wor- 
thip that is surely first with us in imlooked-for joy, she had 
knelt down and thanked God, and had barely concluded 
her thanksgivings when the first messenger.of evil appeared 
before her, and she knew that ruin, hopeless and utter, had 
overtaken the home she had toiled to save. 

She had neither spoken nor, to her own knowledge, 
moved, smce the awful news came, and when the swarm of 
dirty black creatures came pouring into the room it had 


THE EASHIOH OF THIS WORLD. 105 

perplexed them to see the tall, white-robed figure, crowned 
with its splendid chestnut hair, standing beside the table 
placed in the side of the great bay window^, seemingly blind, 
deaf, and insensible to what was passing around her. 

But now, as Hammett came up to her, the frozen look 
passed slowly out of her eyes and face; she looked at him, 
and her dry lips moved as if she were struggling to speak. 

He took her hand and kissed it humbly; but as he lifted 
his head their eyes met, and she knew that he loved her. 

In the violent shock of that discovery her features be- 
trayed her, and it was like an answer to an amazed ques- 
tion when he said : 

“ I love you, Audrey. I have loved you now for a year. 

She half stretched out her hand, as if she would put him 
and his words aside, but he went on speaking: 

‘‘ Do you think I have been learning your face all this 
time not to love you? Yours has been the soul of the 
house, the wahing soul that watched while the others sle23t; 
and I have read your thoughts, Sunday by Sunday, and I 
have seen the floods of ruin creeping up to your very 
threshold, and I have been powerless to check them, for I 
am poor, Audrey, poorer even than you. 

What a yearning bitterness, what despair was in his 
.voice! Standing erect, though smitten, with her household 
gods shattered around her, Audrey yet knew that a soul 
inimitably more wretched than her own looked at her out' 
of Hammett ^s eyes and spoke in his words, and in some 
subtle way she felt that their lives, predestined to work and 
struggle, were also destined to mingle, perhaps, in some 
high effort, and striving ever upward, perchance should at- 
tain to something great at last. 

Her eyes had deepened and darkened as she looked at 
him, and there kindled in them a flame, as if newly caught 
from the soul, that seemed to pierce to his, and leave a 
glory there. 


106 THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 

We can only do our duty/’ she said; God will take 
care of the rest. ” 

You have helped me to do mine,” he said; then went 
away, intent on the most ugly mission that a man can 
undertake on either liis own or his friend’s account — to 
borrow. 


CHAPTER XXII. 

And now my sorrow’s past and gone, 

And joy’s returned to me; 

And here I’ve gowd enough forbye 
Behind this third pennie.” 

Oricklehorn had enjoyed no such delightful spasms of 
wonder, horror, curiosity, and secret satisfaction within the 
memory of the oldest inhabitant, as between the Saturday 
morning when the bailiffs walked into Tom Bonnor’s house, 
and the Sunday morning when the congregation watched 
breathlessly to behold Avhether his servant or his maid, his 
ox or liis ass, would venture to appear and occupy his pew. 

It was well known by now that the seizure of his goods 
had been one of those illegal acts that the law nevertheless 
allows; that he had received no notice of distraint save 
what was furnished by a document thrust into his hand less 
than a minute before packing began; that a vast number 
of valuables seized were not in the bill of sale at all; and 
that, if he had been given twelve hours’ grace, he could 
have paid the money that would have cleared out the horde 
of Jews, probably pell-mell, with his noble leg persuasively 
assisting their departure. 

But when at eight o’clock on Saturday evening he had 
galloped through the town, haggard, covered with dust, his 
horse almost bursting his heart in his gallant effort, people 
drew back and turned pale, for they knew that he would 
find a house bare of furniture as his hand, and that not 
even a sign outside would remain of the^micleanly host who 


THE FASHIOiir OF THIS 'WORLD. 107 

had sacked and despoiled the home of fifty years in less 
than a dozen hours. ^Vhen he had dashed into the stable- 
yard and the barken gates had clanged to behind him, anx- 
ious crowds had gathered round them, and along all the 
front of the house that looked to the street, and people 
listened for they knew not what; and Hammett, who had 
failed in his errand, came with a sick heart and listened 
too, but all was quiet within as the grave. 

How had Tom Bonnor looked? What had he said Avhen 
he came back to find his wife with the Bible on her knees, 
and the children already at play in the unrified garden be- 
yond? I think that she laid her Bible down to put her 
arms round his neck and kiss liim. . . . And so the 

first bitterness was past; and how they all passed that 
night I know not, but what the world of Oricklehorn saw 
next mornmg we may see also. 

Then first, and just as the parson was bowing his head 
in silent prayer, and the choristers were folding their white 
surplices about their faces in imitation of him, a kind of 
thrill ran through the church, and all eyes stared wildly 
toward the door through which came Tom Bonnor, leading 
liis youngest daughter, and behind him three or four fresh- 
faced boys, and then Audrey walking with her mother. 

The father was dressed neither more nor less carefully 
than usual; the others were daintily and perfectly turned 
out, and the loftiness of bearing that is not pride '\vas never 
more cons]3icuous in the Bomior family than now, when 
they filed slowly into their places and the service began. 

If Mrs. Bonnor^ s cheek were a little pale it had been 
sometimes paler in the height of her prosperity than it was 
to-day. If Tom^s eye were haggard it held, too, the indig- 
nant fire of an honest man who has been dishonestly be- 
trayed; and, without effort, he held himself erect among 
the people- in whose midst he had been disgraced. 

Patty surveyed her prayer-book or her nearest neighbor's 
with her usual exquisite air of naivete and sweetness, the 


108 


THE EASHIOH OF THIS WORLD. 


boys suiTej)titioiisly cut antics as usual, but Audrey, who 
bad put on her bonnet more carefully than she had ever 
done in her life before, presently forgot her surroundings in 
her thoughts which gradually took the shape of t;wo large 
tears that showed conspicuously as she stood with eyes lifted 
toward the distant sky. Success was there, and fame, but 
between her and it stretched ruin and a desolated home. 
A slight touch on her foot caused her to start, and she 
looked down to see her father frowning at her with a hearti- 
ness that acted on her hke a reviving charm; he could not 
be broken-hearted to frown hke that, and she sat through 
the sermon in patience, her face convincing all who sat 
nearest that, after all, the squire .-’^ would right himself, 
liis belongings be brought back, and things go on as before. 

Did the parson know what martyrdom the man who sat 
below liim was enduring, that he cut short his discourse by 
quite ten minutes, and was seen to look back before he 
reached the vestry at Tom Bonnor, who marched out erect, 
heading liis little flock, all as it were with flags of cheerful- 
ness and beauty flying, and with as light a ste]!, as serene 
an air as he had brought in and out with him for over two 
score of years? But that was Tom^s last march-past of the 
world, for by midnight of that day he was dead. 

On returning from church he had gone straight to the 
garden, and sat down on a rustic seat out of sight of the 
house, and as his gaze wandered around, and saw no touch 
of the spoiler on sward or leaf and blossom, his expression 
became more natural, and he sighed. 

The laughing voices of his children sounded faintly in 
the distance; they had recovered from the shock of yester- 
day ... it was just hke a real picnic — only at home, 
and they were assisting the faithful servants to lay the table 
in one of the dismantled rooms, and Mrs. Bonnor, with a 
vague feehng of having come into port after awTul ship- 
wi’eck, was laying aside her cloak and bonnet upstairs. 

The lawn wants mowing,'" said Tom, and to-morrow 


THE FASHIOK OF THIS WORLD. 


109 


they shall put eyery stick and stone back in its place, 
and . . . your mother. . . Audrey caught him 

in her arms, as in the act of rising, he glanced around 
with something strange in his eyes, and he moved a step 
forward as if to welcome those tripping shapes of youth and 
brightness that had peopled his garden and made it home. 
Then he shpped from her to the ground, and never moved 
again. 

So the bells tolled out at early morning for Tom Bonnor, 
and the vault, made large enough for a dozen more, was 
prepared to receive him. 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

Six abeles i’ the kirkyard grow, on the north side in a row 
— Toll slowly / 

And the shadows of their tops rock across the little slopes of 
the grassy graves below.” 

The money for which Tom Bonnor had ridden so fast 
and far the day before was taken by loving hands from 
above his dead heart; but it never went to restore his home 
to its old likeness; the huge vans containing his plate, his 
pictures, the rocking-horses of his children, the cherished 
hooks and treasures of a life-time, proceeded unchecked to 
London, and in due time were sold to the Jews among 
themselves; after which, having cleared about a thousand 
per cent, on the transaction, they subsequently charged the 
estate with costs amounting to three hundred pounds. 

The money that Tom had borrowed, I say, was returned 
within forty-eight hours to the only man, save usurers, 
from whom he had ever asked a farthing, and it was Au- 
drey's hand that addressed the packet, and wrote the letter 
that accompanied it. 

She had the entire conduct of affairs, and her mother, 
stunned less by calamity than the personal sense of bereave- 
ment, passively agreed to all she did. 


110 


THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD. 


Audrey had resolved that no men married into their 
family should be importuned for alms and help, there 
should be no intimation to her married sisters that their 
father was dead, and so it chanced (the Avorld being so little 
and so great) not a whisper reached those highly placed 
ones of the earth, till in the papers they accidentally learned 
that for ten days they had been fatherless. 

Telegrams addressed to their mother got no reply, letters 
imanswered were followed by the writers, who foimd only a 
locked house door, and within it the silence of death. 
Whither had Tom Bonnor^s wife and cliildren goner What 
would the future bring them? If for Audrey a star had 
risen in the sky, who should not say that it might fall to 
earth, and the glory it had represented to her, fall in black- 
ness at her feet? 

If the family solicitor, who lived in London, knew of 
their whereabouts, he never divulged it, even to the eager- 
eyed, handsome young man who came at odd intervals to 
implore news of Audrey. “ I love her,^^ he had said at last 
with stubborn lips; and I beHeve that I could make her 
love me.^^ 

But she is a famous woman now,^^ said the lawyer,, 
provoked into truth by the importunity of the yomig man. 

Then I shall be able to find her,^'’ said Hammett, and 
went out, his pulses throbbmg, a sense of exultation on her 
behalf blending with the fire in his veins. 

He went straight to a great book-seller in the Strand and 
boldly asked for the new novel by Audrey Bo nn or. 

It was given him immediately, and as he paid for it he 
asked some questions as to the work of the writer. 

DonT know if it^s good, but it sells hke wild-fire, said 
the young man. “ Never read books myself, but the 
missus does.^^ 

“ And does she like this one?^^ 

Cries and laughs over it.^^ 

So she had succeeded before she was twenty-one years of 


THE FASHIOH OF THIS WORLD. 


Ill 


age, and he was eight-and-twenty, and had failed. Does 
success come by desert? He did not know, but he knew 
that the gulf betwixt him and Audrey, that might have 
been bridged by her failure, would never be bridged now by 
her success. 

And where was Audrey? What was she making now of 
her life? Would fame ruin her and choke the seed that yet 
lay in her heart? Would her influence be for good or evil 
on those who read her, or would the world^s flattery react 
upon, and make impotent and vain her talent? 

Who could tell? Let the future decide, and perchance 
those who have cared to follow the fortmies of Audrey in 
her reverses, may care to observe her later in the full tide 
and prosperity of her career. 


THE END. 


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664 Rory O’AIore. By Samuel Lover 20 

665 The Dove in the Eagle’s Nest. 

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666 My Young Alcides. By Char- 

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S67 The Golden Lion of Granpere. 

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668 Half-Way. An Anglo-French 

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669 The Philosophy of Whist. By 

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670 The Rose and the Ring. By W. 

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672 In Alaremma. By “ Ouida.” 

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672 In Alaremma. By “ Ouida.” 

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673 Story of a Sin. By Helen B. 

Alathers 20 

674 First Person Singular. By 

David Christie Alurray 20 

675 Airs. Dymond. By Aliss Thack- 

eray 20 

676 A Child’s History of England. 

By Charles Dickens 20 

677 Griselda. By the author of “ A 

AVoman’s Love-Story ” 20 

678 Dorothy’s A^enture. By Alary 

Cecil Hay 20 

679 AA’here Two Ways Aleet. By 

Sarah Doudney 10 

680 Fast and Loose. By Arthur 

Griffiths 20 

681 A Singer’s Story. By Alay Laf- 

fan - 10 

682 In the Aliddle AA'atch. By AV. 

Clark Russell 20 

683 The Bachelor Vicar of New- 

forth. By Airs. J. Harcourt- 
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684 Last Days at Apswich 10 

685 England Under Gladstone. 1880 

—1885. By Justin H.AIcCarthy, 
AI.P 20 

686 Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and 

Air. Hyde. By Robert Louis 
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687 A Country Gentleman. By Airs. 

Oliphant 20 

688 A Alan of Honor. By John 

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689 The Heir Presumptive. By 

Florence Alarryat 20 

690 Far From the Aladding Crowd. 

By Thomas Hardy 20 

691 A^alentine Strange. By David 

Christie Murray ..20 

692 The Alikado, and Other Comic 

Operas. AA^ritten by AV. S. 
Gilbert. Composed by Arthur 
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693 Felix Holt, the Radical. By 

George Eliot 20 

694 John Alaidment. By Julian 

Sturgis 20 

695 Hearts: Queen, Knave, and 

Deuce. By David Christie 
Alurray 20 

696 Thaddeus of AA^arsaw. B}’^ Aliss 

Jane Porter 20 

697 The Pretty Jailer. By F. Du 

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T13 “ Cherry Ripe I” By Helen B. 

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716 Victor and Vanquished. By 

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717 Beau Tancrede; or, the Mar- 

riage Verdict. By Alexander 
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718 Unfairly Won. By Mrs. Power 

O’Donoghue 20 

719 Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. 

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720 Paul Clifford. By Sir E. Bulwer 

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721 Dolores. By Mrs. Forrester 20 

722 What’s Mine’s Mine. By George 

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723 Mauleverer’s Millions. By T. 

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724 My Lord and My Lady. By’ 

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725 My Ten Years’ Imprisonment. 

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726 My Hero. By Mrs. Forrester... 20 

727 Fair Women. By Mrs. Forrester 20 

728 Janet’s Repentance. By George 

Eliot 10 

T29 Mignon. Mrs. Forrester 20 

T30 The Autobiography of Benja- 
min Franklin 10 

731 The Bayou Bride. By Mrs. Mary 

E. Bry’an 20 

732 From Olympus to Hades. By 

Mrs. Forrester 20 

733 Lady Branksmere. By “The 

Duchess” 20 

734 Viva. By Mrs. Forrester 20 

735 Until the Day Breaks. By 

Emily Spender 20 

736 Roy and Wola. Mrs. Forrester 20 

737 Aunt Rachel. By David Christie 

Murray 10 

738 In the Golden Days. By Edna 

Lyall 20 

739 The Caged Lion. By Charlotte 

M. Yonge 20- 

740 Rhona. By Mrs. Forrester 20 

741 The Heiress of Hilldrop; or. 

The Romance of a Young 
Girl. By Charlotte M. Braeme, 
author of “ Dora Thorne ”... 20' 

742 Love and Life. By Charlotte 

M. Yonge 20 

743 Jack’s Courtship. By W. Clark 

Russell. 1st half 20 

743 Jack’s Courtship. By W. Clark 

Russell. 2d half 20 


744 Diana Care w ; or. For a Wom- 

an’s Sake. By ]\Irs. Forrester 20 

745 For Another’s Sin ; or, A Strug- 

gle for Love. By Charlotte M. 
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746 Cavalry Life: or. Sketches and 

Stories in Barracks and Out. 

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747 Our Sensation Novel. Edited 

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748 Hurrish : A Study. B.y the 

Hon. Emily Lawless. 20 

749 Lord Vanecourt’s Daughter. By 

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757 Love’s Martyr. By Laurence 

Alma Tadema 10 < 

759 In Shallow Waters. By Annie 
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The foregoing works, contained in The Seaside Library, Pocket Edition, 
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GEORGE MUNRO, 

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02 ; ^ 


P. O. Box 3751. 


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C69 Pole on Whist 

749 Lord Vanecom t’s Daughter. By 

Mabel Collins 20 

750 An Old Story of My Farming 

Days. By Iritz Reuter. First 


half 20 

750 An Old Story of My Farming 
Days. By Fritz Reuter. Second 
half 20 

752 Jackanapes, and Other Stories. 

By Juliana Horatia Ewing. . 10 

753 King Solomon’s Mines. By H. 

Rider Haggard.. 20 

754 How to be Happy Though Mar- 

ried. By a Graduate in the 

University of Matrimony 20 

75.5 Margery Daw. A Novel 20 

756 The Strange Adventures of Cap- 

tain Dangerous. A Narrative 
in Plain English. Attempted 
by George Augustus Sala 20 

757 Love’s Martyr. By Laurence 

Alma Tadema 10 

758 “Good-b 3 'e, Sweetheart!” By 

Rhoda Broughton 20 

759 In Shallow Waters. By Annie 

Armitt 20 

760 Aurelian ; or, Rome in the Third 

Century. By William Ware. . 20 

761 Will Weatherhelm. By Wm. 

H. G. Kingston 20 

762 Impressions of Theophrastus 

Such. By George Eliot 10 

763 The Midshipman, Marmaduke 

Merry. By Wm. H. G. Kingston 20 

764 The Evil Genius. By Wilkie 

Collins 20 

765 Not ’Wisely, But Too Well. By 

Rhoda Broughton 20 

766 No. XIII; or, the Story of the 

Lost Vestal. By Emma Mar- 
shall 10 

767 Joan. By Rhoda Broughton .. . 20 

768 Red as a Rose is She. By Rhoda 

Broughton 20 

769 Cometh Up as a Flower. By 

Rhoda Broughton 20 

770 The Castle of Otranto. By 

Horace Walpole 10 

771 A Mental Struggle. By “The 

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772 Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood 

Trader. By R. M. Ballantyne 20 

773 The Mark of Cain. By Andrew 

Lang 10 

774 The Life and Travels of Mungo 

Park 10 

775 The Three Clerks. By Anthony 

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776 P6re Goriot. By H. De Balzac. 20 

777 The Vo.yages and Travels of Sir 

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778 Society’s Verdict. BytheAuihor 

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779 Doom! An Atlantic Episode. 

By Justin H. McCarthy, M.P. 10 

780 Rare Pale Margaret. By author 

of “ What’s His Offence?” 20 

781 The Secret Dispatch. By James 

Grant 10 

782 The Clo.sed Door. By F. Du 

Boisgobey. 1st half 20 

782 The Closed Door. By F. Du 

Boisgobey. 2d half 20 

783 Chantry House. By Charlotte 

M. Yonge 20 

784 The Two Miss Flemings. By the 

author of “ W^hat’s His 
Offence?” 20 

785 The Haunted Chamber. By 

” The Duchess ” 10 


787 Court Royal. A Story of Cross 
Currents. By S. Baring-Gould 20 

789 Through the Looking-Glass, 

and What Alice Found There. 

By Lewis Carroll. With fifty 
illustrations by John Tenniel. 20 

790 The Chaplet of Pearls; or. The 

White and Black Ribaumont. 
Charlotte M. Yonge. 1st half 20 
790 The Chaplet of Pearls; or, The 


"White and Black Ribaumont. 
Charlotte M. Y'onge. 2d half 20 
791 The Mayor of Casterbridge. By 

Thomas Hardy 20 

793 Vivian Grey. By the Right Hon. 
Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of 
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793 Vivian Grey. By the Right Hon. 

Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of 
Beaconsfield. Second half. . . 20 

794 Beaton’s Bargain. By Mrs. Al- 

exander 20 

795 Sam’s Sweetheart. By Helen 

B. Mathers 20 

796 In a Grass Country. A Story of 

Love and Sport. By Mrs. H. 
Lovett Cameron. 20 

797 Look Before You Leap. By 

Mrs. Alexander 20 

798 The Fashion of this World. B 3 ' 

Helen B. Mathers 10 


800 Hopes and Fears;- or. Scenes 
from the Life of a Spinster. 
Charlotte M. Yonge. 1st half 20 
800 Hopes and Fears; or. Scenes 
from the Life of a Spinster. 
Charlotte M. Yonge. 2d half 20 


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BY MISS JULIET CORSON, 

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Miss Corson is the best American writer on cooking. All of her recipes 
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A NEW STORY AND PROBABLY THE LAST 

By Mary Cecil Hay, 

ENTITLED, 

“A WICKED GIRL,” 

WILL BE COMMENCED IN THE JULY NUMBER 

OP THE 

New York Monthly Fashion Bazar. 


We give below the Author’s letter in regard to the story: — 

MR. GEORGE MUNRO: 

Dear Sir,— -Since writing to you I have decided not to issue my last 
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fore), then through Maxwell— not having it to run in serial here at all. But I 
am quite willing you should issue it as a serial in America, on the old terms, if 
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thanks for the copies of my short stories; many thanks, also, for your pleasant 
letter. It gives me a very glad sensation, after all, to feel that my last tale will 
appear in America in only American dress. 

Yours, very truly, 

MARY CECIL HAY. 

“ A WICKED GIRL ” will be commenced in the July number 
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